Reddy and I were alone at the Lake beds. He sat outside the cabin,
braiding a leather hat-band—eight strands, and the “repeat” figure—an
art that I never could master.

I sat inside, with a one-pound package of smoking tobacco beside me,
and newspapers within reach, rolling the day's supply of cigarettes.

Reddy stopped his story long enough to say: “Don't use the
'Princess' Slipper,' Kid—that paper burns my tongue—take the
'Granger'; there's plenty of it.”

Well, as I was saying, I'd met a lot of the boys up in town this
day, and they threw as many as two drinks into me; I know that for
certain, because when we took the parting dose, I had a glass of whisky
in both my right hands, and had just twice as many friends as when I
started.

When I pulled out for home, I felt mighty good for myself—not
exactly looking for trouble, but not a-going to dodge it any, either. I
was warbling “Idaho” for all I was worth—you know how pretty I can
sing? Cock-eyed Peterson used to say it made him forget all his
troubles. “Because,” says he, “you don't notice trifles when a man bats
you over the head with a two-by-four.”

Well, I was enjoying everything in sight, even a little drizzle of
rain that was driving by in rags of wetness, when a flat-faced swatty
at Fort Johnson halted me.

Now it's a dreadful thing to be butted to death by a nanny-goat, but
for a full-sized cowpuncher to be held up by a soldier is worse yet.

To say that I was hot under the collar don't give you the right idea
of the way I felt.

“Why, you cross between the Last Rose of Summer and a bobtailed
flush!” says I, “what d'yer mean? What's got into you? Get out of my
daylight, you dog-robber, or I'll walk the little horse around your
neck like a three-ringed circus. Come, pull your freight!”

It seems that this swatty had been chucked out of the third story of
Frenchy's dance emporium by Bronc. Thompson, which threw a great
respect for our profesh into him. Consequently he wasn't fresh like
most soldiers, but answers me as polite as a tin-horn gambler on
pay-day.

Says he: “I just wanted to tell you that old Frosthead and forty
braves are some'ers between here and your outfit, with their war paint
on and blood in their eyes, cayoodling and whoopin' fit to beat hell
with the blower on, and if you get tangled up with them, I reckon
they'll give you a hair-cut and shampoo, to say nothing of other
trimmings. They say they're after the Crows, but it's a ten-dollar bill
against a last year's bird's-nest that they'll take on any kind of
trouble that comes along. Their hearts is mighty bad, they state, and
when an Injun's heart gets spoiled, the disease is d—d catching. You'd
better stop awhile.”

“Now, cuss old Frosthead, and you too!” says I. “If he comes
crow-hopping on my reservation; I'll kick his pantalettes on top of his
scalp-lock.”

“All right, pardner!” says he. “It's your own funeral. My orders was
to halt every one going through; but I ain't a whole company, so you
can have it your own way. Only, if your friends have to take you home
in a coal-scuttle, don't blame me. Pass, friend!”

So I went through the officers' quarters forty miles an hour,
letting out a string of yells you might have heard to the coast, just
to show my respect for the United States army.

Now this has always been my luck: Whenever I made a band-wagon play,
somebody's sure to strike me for my licence. Or else the team goes into
the ditch a mile further on, and I come out about as happy as a small
yaller dog at a bob-cat's caucus.

Some fellers can run in a rhinecaboo that 'd make the hair stand up
on a buffeler robe, and get away with it just like a mice; but that
ain't me. If I sing a little mite too high in the cellar, down comes
the roof a-top of me. So it was this day. Old Johnny Hardluck socked it
to me, same as usual.

Gosh a'mighty! The liquor died in me after a while, and I went sound
asleep in the saddle, and woke up with a jar—to find myself right in
the middle of old Frosthead's gang; the drums “boom-blipping"
and those forty-odd red tigers “hyah-hayahing” in a style that made my
skin get up and walk all over me with cold feet.

How in blazes I'd managed to slip through those Injuns I don't know.
'Twould have been a wonderful piece of scouting if I'd meant it. You
can 'most always do any darn thing you don't want to do. Well, there I
was, and, oh Doctor! but wasn't I in a lovely mess! That war-song put a
crimp into me that Jack Frost himself couldn't take out.

It was as dark as dark by this time. The moon just stuck one eye
over the edge of the prairie, and the rest of the sky was covered with
cloud. A little light came from the Injuns' camp-fire, but not enough
to ride by, and, besides, I didn't know which way I ought to go.

Says I to myself, “Billy Sanders, you are the champion all-around,
old-fashioned fool of the district. You are a jackass from the country
where ears less'n three foot long are curiosities. You sassed that poor
swatty that wanted to keep you out of this, tooting your bazoo like a
man peddling soap; but now it's up to you. What are you going to do
about it?” and I didn't get any answer, neither.

Well, it was no use asking myself conundrums out there in the dark
when time was so scarce. So I wraps my hankercher around. Laddy's nose
to keep him from talking horse to the Injun ponies, and prepared to
sneak to where I'd rather be.

Laddy was the quickest thing on legs in that part of the
country—out of a mighty spry little Pinto mare by our thoroughbred
Kentucky horse—and I knew if I could get to the open them Injuns
wouldn't have much of a chance to take out my stopper and examine my
works—not much. A half-mile start, and I could show the whole Sioux
nation how I wore my hair.

I cut for the place where the Injuns seemed thinnest, lifting myself
up till I didn't weigh fifteen pound, and breathing only when
necessary. We got along first-rate until we reached the edge of 'em,
and then Laddy had to stick his foot in a gopher-hole, and walloped
around there like a whale trying to climb a tree.

Some dam cuss of an Injun threw a handful of hay on the fire, and,
as it blazed up, the whole gang spotted me.

I unlimbered my gun, sent the irons into Laddy, and we began to
walk.

I didn't like to make for the ranch, as I knew the boys were
short-handed, so I pointed north, praying to the good Lord that I'd hit
some kind of settlement before I struck the North Pole.

Well, we left those Injuns so far behind that there wasn't any fun
in it. I slacked up, patting myself on the back; and, as the trouble
seemed all over, I was just about to turn for the ranch, when I heard
horses galloping, and as the moon came out a little I saw a whole raft
of redskins a-boiling up a draw not half a mile away. That knocked me
slab-sided. It looked like I got the wrong ticket every time the wheel
turned.

I whooped it up again, swearing I wouldn't stop this deal short of a
dead sure thing. We flew through space—Laddy pushing a hole in the air
like a scart kiyote making for home and mother.

A ways down the valley I spotted a little shack sitting all alone by
itself out in the moonlight. I headed for it, hollering murder.

A man came to the door in his under-rigging.

“Hi, there! What's eating you?” he yells.

“Injuns coming, pardner! The country's just oozing Injuns! Better
get a wiggle on you!”

“All right—slide along, I'll ketch up to you,” says he.

I looked back and saw him hustling out with his saddle on his arm.
“He's a particular kind of cuss,” I thought; “bareback would suit most
people.”

Taking it a little easier for the next couple of miles, I gave him a
chance to pull up.

We pounded along without saying anything for a spell, when I
happened to notice that his teeth were chattering.

I took a look at him, and saw, sure enough, while he had hat, coat,
and boots on, the pants was missing. Well, if it had been the last act,
I'd have had to laugh.

“Couldn't find 'em nohow,” says he; “hunted high and low, jick,
Jack, and the game—Just comes to my mind now that I had 'em rolled up
and was sleeping on 'em. I don't like to go around this way'—I feel as
if I was two men, and one of 'em hardly respectable.”

“Did you bring a gun with you?”

He gave me another stare. “Why, pardner, you must think I have got a
light and frivolous disposition,” says he, and with that he heaves up
the great-grand-uncle of all the six-shooters I ever did see. It made
my forty-five-long look like something for a kid to cut its teeth on.
“That's the best gun in this country,” he went on.

“Looks as if it might be,” says I. “Has the foundry that cast it
gone out of business? I'd like to have one like it, if it's as
dangerous as it looks.”

“When I have any trouble with a man,” says he, “I don't want to go
pecking at him with a putty-blower, just irritating him, and giving him
a little skin complaint here and there; I want something that'll touch
his conscience.”

He had it, for a broadside from that battery would scatter an
elephant over a township.

We loped along quiet and easy until sun-up. The Grindstone Buttes
lay about a mile ahead of us. Looking back, we saw the Injuns coming
over a rise of ground 'way in the distance.

“Now,” says my friend, “I know a short cut through those hills
that'll bring us out at Johnson's. They've got enough punchers there to
do the United States army up—starched and blued. Shall we take it?”

“Sure!” says I. “I'm only wandering around this part of the country
because this part of the country is here—if it was anywheres else I'd
be just as glad.”

So in we went. It was the steepest and narrowest kind of a canon,
looking as if it had been cut out of the rock with one crack of the
axe. I was just thinking: “Gee whiz! but this would be a poor place to
get snagged in,” when bang! says a rifle right in front of us, and
m-e-arr! goes the bullet over our heads.

We were off them horses and behind a, couple of chunks of rock
sooner than we hoped for, and that's saying a good deal.

“I wouldn't mind that half as much as winning,” says I. “But on the
square, do you think we can get out? I'll jump him with you if you say
so, although I ain't got what you might call a passion for suicide.”

“Now you hold on a bit,” says he. “I don't know but what we'd have
done better to stick to the horses, and run for it, but it's too late
to think of that. Jumping him is all foolishness; he'd sit behind his
little rock and pump lead into us till we wouldn't float in brine—and
we can't back out now.”

He talked so calm it made me kind of mad. “Well,” says I, “in that
case, let's play 'Simon says thumbs up' till the rest of the crowd
comes.”

“There you go!” says he. “Just like all young fellers—gettin'
hosstyle right away if you don't fall in with their plans. Now, Sonny,
you keep your temper, and watch me play cushion carroms with our friend
there.”

“Meaning how?”

“You see that block of stone just this side of him with the square
face towards us? Well, he's only covered in front, and I'm a-going to
shoot against that face and ketch him on the glance.”

“Great, if you could work it!” says I. “But Lord!”

“Well, watch!” says he. Then he squinched down behind his cover, so
as not to give the Injun an opening, trained his cannon and pulled the
trigger. The old gun opened her mouth and roared like an earthquake,
but I didn't see any dead Injun. Then twice more she spit fire, and
still there weren't any desirable corpses to be had.

“Say, pardner,” says I, “you wouldn't make many cigars at this
game!”

“Now, don't you get oneasy,” says he. “Just watch!”

“Biff!” says the old gun, and this time, sure enough, the
Injun was knocked clear of the rock. I felt all along that he wouldn't
be much of a comfort to his friends afterwards, if that gun did land on
him.

Still, he wasn't so awful dead, for as we jumped for the horses he
kind of hitched himself to the rock, and laying the rifle across it,
and working the lever with his left hand, he sent a hole plumb through
my hat.

“Bully boy!” says I. I snapped at him, and smashed the lock of his
rifle to flinders. Then, of course, he was our meat.

As we rode up to him, my pard held dead on him. The Injun stood up
straight and tall, and looked us square in the eye—say, he was a man,
I tell you, red-skin or no red-skin. The courage just stuck out on him
as he stood there, waiting to pass in his checks.

My pardner threw the muzzle of his gun up. “D—n it!” says he, “I
can't do it—he's game from the heart out! But the Lord have mercy on
his sinful soul if he and I run foul of each other on the prairie
again!”

Then we shacked along down to Johnson's and had breakfast.

“What became of Frosthead and his gang?” Oh, they sent out a
regiment or two, and gathered him in—'bout twenty-five soldiers to an
Injun. No, no harm was done. Me and my pard were the only ones that
bucked up against them. Chuck out a cigarette, Kid; my lungs ache for
want of a smoke.

“How did I come to get myself disliked down at the Chanta Seechee?
Well, I'll tell you,” said Reddy, the cow-puncher. “The play came up
like this. First, they made the Chanta Seechee into a stock company,
then the stock company put all their brains in one think, and says
they, 'We'll make this man Jones superintendent, and the ranch is all
right at once.' So out comes Jones from Boston, Massachusetts, and what
he didn't know about running a ranch was common talk in the country,
but what he thought he knew about running a ranch was too much for one
man to carry around. He wasn't a bad-hearted feller in some ways, yet
on the whole he felt it was an honour to a looking-glass to have the
pleasure of reflecting him. Looking-glass? I should say he had! And a
bureau, and a boot-blacking jigger, and a feather bed, and curtains,
and truck in his room. Strange fellers used to open their eyes when
they saw that room. 'Helloo-o!' they'd say, 'whose little birdie have
we here?' And other remarks that hurt our feelings considerable.
Jonesy, he said the fellers were a rank lot of barbarians. He said it
to old Neighbour Case's face, and he and the old man came together like
a pair of hens, for Jonesy had sand in spite of his faults, That was a
fight worth travelling to see. They covered at least an acre of ground;
they tore the air with upper swats and cross swipes; they hollered,
they jumped and they pitched, and when the difficulty was adjusted we
found that Jonesy's coat was painfully ripped up the back and Neighbour
Case had lost his false teeth. One crowd of fellers patted Jones on the
back and said, 'Never mind your coat, old horse; you've licked a man
twice your age,' and the other comforted Neighbour, saying, 'Never
mind, Case; you can ease your mind by thinking how you headed up that
rooster, and he fifty pounds lighter than you.'

“Jonesy put on airs after that. He felt he was a hard citizen. And
then he had the misfortune to speak harshly to Arizona Jenkins when Old
Dry Belt was in liquor. Then he got roped and dragged through the
slough. He cried like a baby whilst I helped him scrape the mud off,
but not because he was scared! No, sir! That little runt was full of
blood and murder.

“'You mark me, now, Red,' says he, the tears making bad-land water
courses through the mud on his cheeks, 'I shall fire upon that man the
first time I see him—will you lend me your revolver?'

“'Lord, Jones, see here,' says I, 'don't you go making any such
billy-goat play as that—keep his wages until he apologizes; put
something harmful in his grub; but, as you have respect for the
Almighty's handiwork as represented by your person, don't pull a gun on
Arizona Jenkins—that's the one thing he won't take from nobody.'

“'D-d-darn him!' snivels Jonesy, 'I ain't afraid o-o-of him;' and
the strange fact is that he wasn't. Well, I saw he was in such a taking
that he might do something foolish and get hurt, so I goes to Arizona
and says I, 'You ought to apologize to Jones.' What Zony replied ain't
worth repeating—'and you along with him,' he winds up.

“'Now ain't that childish?' I says. 'A six-footer like you that can
shoot straight with either hand, and yet ain't got generosity enough to
ease the feelings of a poor little devil that's fair busting with
shame.'

“'Well, what did he want to tell me to shut up my mouth for?' cried
Old Dry Belt. 'Men have died of less than that.'

“'Aw, shucks, Zony,' I says, 'a great, big man like you oughtn't to
come down on a little cuss who's all thumb-hand-side and left feet.'

“'That be blowed,' says he—only he says it different. 'I'd like to
know what business such a sawed-off has to come and tell a full-grown
man like me to shut up his mouth? He'd ought to stay in a little man's
place and talk sassy to people his own size. When he comes shooting off
his bazoo to a man that could swaller him whole without loosening his
collar, it's impidence; that's what it is.'

“'Well, as a favour to me?' I says.

“'Well, if you put it in that way—I don't want to be small about
it.'

“So Arizona goes up to Jones and sticks out his hand. 'There's my
hand, Jones,' he says. 'I'm mighty sorry you told me to shut up my
mouth,' says he.

“'So am I,' says Jones heartily, not taking in the sense of the
words, but feeling that it was all in good intention. So that was all
right and I stood in with the management in great shape for fixing up
the fuss so pleasant. But it didn't last. They say nothing lasts in
this world. There's some pretty solid rocks in the Coeur d'Alene,
however, and I should like to wait around and see if they don't hold
out, but I'll never make it. I've been in too much excitement.

“Well, the next thing after Jonesy got established was that his
niece must come out during vacation and pay him a visit. 'Jee-rusalem!'
thinks I, 'Jonesy's niece!' I had visions of a thin, yaller, sour
little piece, with mouse-coloured hair plastered down on her head, and
an unkind word for everybody. Jonesy told me about her being in
college, and then I stuck a pair of them nose-grabber specks on the
picture. I can stand 'most any kind of a man, but if there's anything
that makes the tears come to my eyes it's a botch of a woman. I know
they may have good qualities and all that, but I don't like 'em, and
that's the whole of it. We gave three loud groans when we got the news
in the bull-pen. And I cussed for ten minutes straight, without
repeating myself once, when it so fell out that the members of the
board rolled out our way the day the girl had to be sent for, and
Jonesy couldn't break loose, and your Uncle was elected to take the
buckboard and drive twenty miles to the railroad. I didn't mind the
going out, but that twenty miles back with Jonesy's niece! Say, I
foamed like a soda-water bottle when I got into the bull-pen and told
the boys my luck.

“'Well,' says Kyle Lambert, 'that's what you might expect; your sins
have found you out.'

“'No, they ain't; they've caught me at home as usual,' says I.
'Well, I'll give that Eastern blossom an idea of the quality of this
country anyhow.' So I togs myself up in the awfullest rig I could find;
strapped two ca'tridge belts to me, every hole filled, and a gun in
every holster; put candle-grease on my mustache and twisted the ends up
to my eye-winkers; stuck a knife in my hatband and another in my boot;
threw a shotgun and a rifle in the buckboard, and pulled out quick
through the colt-pens before Jonesy could get his peeps onto me.

“Well, sir, I was jarred witless when I laid my eyes on that young
woman. I'd had my mind made up so thorough as to what she must be that
the facts knocked me cold. She was the sweetest, handsomest, healthiest
female I ever see. It would make you believe in fairy stories again
just to look at her. She was all the things a man ever wanted in this
world rolled up in a prize package. Tall, round and soople, limber and
springy in her action as a thoroughbred, and with something modest yet
kind of daring in her face that would remind you of a good, honest boy.
Red, white, and black were the colours she flew. Hair and eyes black,
cheeks and lips red, and the rest of her white. Now, there's a pile of
difference in them colours; when you say 'red,' for instance, you ain't
cleaned up the subject by a sight. My top-knot's red, but that wasn't
the colour of Loy's cheeks. No; that was a colour I never saw before
nor since. A rose would look like a tomater alongside of 'em. Then,
too, I've seen black eyes so hard and shiny you could cut glass with
'em. And again that wasn't her style. The only way you could get a
notion of what them eyes were like would be to look at 'em; you'd
remember 'em all right if you did. Seems like the good Lord was kind of
careless when he built Jonesy, but when he turned that girl out he
played square with the fambly.

“I ain't what you might call a man that's easily disturbed in his
mind, but I know I says to myself that first day, 'If I was ten year
younger, young lady, they'd never lug you back East again.' Gee, man!
There was a time when I'd have pulled the country up by the roots but
I'd have had that girl! I notice I don't fall in love so violent as the
years roll on. I can squint my eye over the cards now and say, 'Yes,
that's a beautiful hand, but I reckon I'd better stay out,' and lay 'em
down without a sigh; whereas, when I was a young feller, it I had three
aces in sight I'd raise the rest of the gathering right out of their
foot-leather—or get caught at it. Usually I got caught at it, for a
man couldn't run the mint long with the kind of luck I have.

“Well, I was plumb disgusted with the fool way I'd rigged myself up,
but, fortunately for me, Darragh, the station-man, came out with the
girl. 'There's Reddy, from your ranch now, ma'am,' says he, and when he
caught sight of me, 'What's the matter, Red; are the Injuns up?'

“Darragh was a serious Irishman, and that's the mournfullest thing
on top of the globe; and besides, he believed anything you'd tell him.
There ain't any George Washington strain in my stock, so I proceeded to
get out of trouble.

“'They ain't up exactly,' says I, 'but it looked as if they were a
leetle on the rise, and being as I had a lady to look out for, I
thought I'd play safe.'

“The colour kind of went out of the girl's cheeks. Eastern folks are
scandalous afraid of Injuns.

“'Perhaps I'd better not start?' says she.

“'Don't you be scart, miss,' says Darragh. 'You're all right as long
as you're with Red—he's the toughest proposition we've got in this
part of the country.'

“'I'm obliged to you, Darragh,' says I. He meant well, but hell's
full of them people. I'd have given a month's wages for one lick at
him. Nice reputation to give me before that girl! She eyed me mighty
doubtful.

“I stepped up to her, with my hat in my hand. 'Miss Andree,' says I
(she was Jonesy's sisters child), 'if you come along with me I'll
guarantee you a safe journey. If any harm reaches you it will be after
one of the liveliest times in the history of the Territory.'

“'That's all right, ma'am; no damage done at all,' says I. 'It's
useless for me to try to conceal the fact that my hair is a little on
the auburn. You mustn't mind what Darragh says. We've had a good deal
of hot weather lately and his brains have gone wrong. Now hop in and
we'll touch the breeze,' So I piled her trunk in and away we flew.

“Bud and Dandy were a corking little team. They'd run the whole
distance from the railway to the ranch if you'd let 'em—and I never
interfered. A straight line and the keen jump hits me all right when
I'm going some place, although I can loaf with the next man on
occasion. So we missed most of the gulleys.

“The ponies were snorting and pulling grass, the buckboard bouncing
behind 'em like a rubber ball, and we were crowding into the teeth of
the northwest wind, which made it seem as if we were travelling 100 per
cent. better than a Dutch clock would show.

“'Goodness gracious!' says the girl, 'do you always go like this in
this country? And aren't there any roads?'

“'Why, no,' says I. 'Hike!' and I snapped the blacksnake over the
ponies' ears, and they strung themselves out like a brace of coyotes,
nearly pulling the buckboard out from under us. 'Sometimes we travel
like this,' I says. 'And as for roads, I despise 'em. You're not
afraid, are you?'

“'Indeed I'm not. I think it's glorious. Might I drive?'

“'If I can smoke,' says I, 'then you can drive.' I'd heard
about young women who'd been brought up so tender that tobacker smoke
would ruin their morals or something, and I kind of wondered if she was
that sort.

“'That's a bargain,' says she prompt. 'But how you're going to light
a cigar in this wind I don't see.'

“'Cigarette,' says I. 'And if you would kindly hold my hat until I
get one rolled I'll take it kind of you.'

“'But what about the horses?' says she.

“'Put your foot on the lines and they'll make. That's the main and
only art of driving on the prairie—not to let the lines get under the
horses' feet—all the rest is just sit still and look at the scenery.'

“She held my hat for a wind-break, and I got my paper pipe together.
And then—not a match. I searched every pocket. Not a lucifer. That is
more of what I got for being funny and changing my clothes. And then
she happened to think of a box she had for travelling, and fished it
out of her grip.

“'Young lady,' I says, 'until it comes to be your bad luck—which I
hope won't ever happen—to be very much in love with a man who won't
play back, you'll never properly know the pangs of a man that's got all
the materials to smoke with except the fire. Now, if I have a chance to
do as much for you sometime, I'm there.'

“'The place for the man that would disdain you is an asylum,' says
I. 'And the only help I'd give you would be to put him there.' She
blushed real nice. I like to see a woman blush. It's a trick they can't
learn.

“But I see she was put out by my easy talk, so I gave her a pat on
the back and says, 'Don't mind me, little girl. We fellers see an
eighteen-carat woman so seldom that it goes to our heads. There wasn't
no offence meant, and you'll be foolish if you put it there. Let's
shake hands.'

“So she laughed again and shook. I mean shook. It wasn't like
handing you so much cold fish—the way some women shake hands. And Loys
and me, we were full pards from date.

“I made one more bad break on the home trip.

“'Jonesy will be powerful glad to see you,' says I.

“'Jonesy!' says she, surprised. 'Jonesy! Oh, is that what you call
Uncle Albert?'

“'Well, it does sometimes happen that way,” says I. And then my
anti-George Washington blood rose again. 'You see, he was kind of
lonesome out there at first, and we took to calling him Jonesy to cheer
him up and make him feel at home,' I says.

“'Oh!' says she. And I reckon she didn't feel so horribly awful
about it, for after looking straight towards the Gulf of Mexico for a
minute, suddenly she bust right out and hollered. It seems that Jones
cut a great deal of grass to a swipe when he was back home in his own
street. It's astonishing how little of a man it takes to do that in the
East. We had an argument once on the subject. 'It's intellect does it,'
says Silver Tompkins. 'Oh, that's it, eh?' says Wind-River Smith.
'Well, I'm glad I'm not troubled that way. I'd rather have a forty-four
chest than a number eight head any day you can find in the almanac.'
And I'm with Smithy. This knowing so much it makes you sick ain't any
better than being so healthy you don't know nothing, besides being
square miles less fun. Another thing about the Eastern folks is they're
so sot in their views, and it don't matter to them whether the facts
bear out their idees or not.

“'Here, take a cigar,' says one of the Board of Directors to me—a
little fat old man, who had to draw in his breath before he could cross
his legs—'them cigarettes'll ruin your health,' says he. Mind you, he
was always kicking and roaring about his liver or stummick, or some of
his works. I'm a little over six-foot-three in my boots when I stand up
straight, and I stood up straight as the Lord would let me and gazed
down at that little man. 'Pardner,' says I, 'I was raised on
cigarettes. When I was two years old I used to have a pull at the
bottle, and then my cigarette to aid digestion. It may be conceit on my
part,' I says, 'but I'd rather be a wreck like me than a prize-fighter
like you.' They're queer; you'd think that that little fat man would
have noticed the difference without my pointing it out to him.

“Well, I don't have to mention that Loys stirred things up
considerable around the Chanta Seechee and vicinity. Gee! What a diving
into wannegans and a fetching out of good clothes there was. And
trading of useful coats and things for useless but decorating silk
handkerchers and things! And what a hair cutting and whisker trimming!

“But Kyle was the man from the go in. And it was right it should be
so. If ever two young people were born to make trouble for each other
it was Kyle and Loys.

“A nice, decent fellow was Kyle. Nothing remarkable, you could say,
and that was one of his best points. Howsomever, he had a head that
could do plain thinking, a pair of shoulders that discouraged
frivoling, and he was as square a piece of furniture as ever came out
of a factory. More'n that; he had quite a little education, saved his
money, never got more than good-natured loaded, and he could ride
anything that had four legs, from a sawhorse to old tiger Buck, who
would kick your both feet out of the sturrups and reach around and bite
you in the small of the back so quick that the boys would be pulling
his front hoofs out of your frame before you'd realize that the canter
had begun. Nice horse, Buck. He like to eat Jonesy up one morning
before Sliver and me could get to the corral. Lord! The sounds made my
blood run cold! Old Buck squealing like a boar-pig in a wolf trap, and
Jonesy yelling, 'Help! Murder! Police!' Even that did not cure Jones
from sticking his nose where it wasn't wanted. Why, once—but thunder!
It would take me a long while to tell you all that happened to Jones.

“One thing that didn't hurt Kyle any in the campaign was that he was
'most as good-looking for a man as she was for a woman. They made a
pair to draw to, I tell you, loping over the prairie, full of health
and youngness! You wouldn't want to see a prettier sight than they
made, and you could see it at any time, for they were together whenever
it was possible. Loys was so happy it made you feel like a boy again to
see her. She told me in private that it was wonderful how the air out
here agreed with her, and I said it was considered mighty bracing, and
never let on that they proclaimed their state of mind every time they
looked at each other. I reckon old smart-Aleck Jonesy was the only
party in the township who didn't understand. Kyle used to put vinegar
in his coffee and things like that, and if you'd ask him, 'What's that
fellow's name that runs the clothing store in town?' he'd come out of
his trance and say 'Yes,' and smile very amiable, to show that he
thoroughly admitted you were right.

“Well, things went as smooth and easy as bob-sledding until it came
time for Loys to be moseying back to college again.

“Then Kyle took me into his confidence. I never was less astonished
in my whole life, and I didn't tell him so. 'Well, what are you going
to do about it?' says I.

“He kind of groaned and shook his head. 'I dunno,' says he. 'Do you
think she likes me, Red?' I felt like saying, 'Well, if you ain't got
all the traits but the long ears, I miss my guess,' but I made
allowances, and says I, 'Well, about that, I don't think I ought to say
anything; still, if I had only one eye left I could see plain that her
education's finished. She don't want any more college, that girl
don't.'

“'Think not?' says he, bracing up. And then, by-and-by, they went
out to ride, for Jonesy was good to the girl, I'll say that for him. He
was willing to do anything for her in reason, according to his views.
But Kyle wasn't in them views; he was out of the picture as far as
husbands went.

“They came back at sunset, when the whole world was glowing red the
same as they were. I reached for the field glasses and took a squint at
them. There was no harm in that, for they were well-behaved young
folks. One look at their faces was enough. There were three of us in
the bull-pen—Bob, and Wind-River Smith, and myself. We'd brought up a
herd of calves from Nanley's ranch, and we were taking it easy. 'Boys,'
says I, under my breath, 'they've made the riffle.'

“'No!' says they, and then everybody had to take a pull at the
glasses.

“'Well, I'm glad,' says Smithy. And darn my buttons if that old
hardshell's voice didn't shake. 'They're two of as nice kids as you'd
find in many a weary day,' says he. 'And I wish 'em all the luck in the
world.'

“'So do I,' says I, 'and I really think the best we could do for 'em
would be to shoot Jones.'

“'Man! Won't he sizz!' says Bob. And you can't blame us old codgers
if we had a laugh at that, although it was such a powerful serious
matter to the youngsters.

“'Let's go out and meet 'em,' says I. And away we went. They weren't
a particle surprised. I suppose they thought the whole universe had
stopped to look on. We pump-handled away and laughed, and Loys she
laughed kind of teary, and Kyle he looked red in the face and proud and
happy and ashamed of himself, and we all felt loosened up considerable,
but I told him on the quiet, 'Take that fool grin off your face, unless
you want Uncle Jones to drop the moment he sees you.'

“Now they only had three days left to get an action on them, as that
was the time set for Loys to go back to college.

“Next day they held a council behind the big barn, and they called
in Uncle Red—otherwise known as Big Red Saunders, or Chanta Seechee
Red, which means 'Bad-heart Red' in Sioux language, and doesn't explain
me by a durn sight—to get the benefit of his valuable advice.

“'Skip,' says I. 'Fly for town and get married, and come back and
tell Jonesy about it. It's a pesky sight stronger argument to tell him
what you have done than what you're going to do.'

“They couldn't quite agree with that. They thought it was sneaky.

“'So it is,' says I. 'The first art of war is understanding how to
make a grand sneak. If you don't want to take my advice you can wait.'
That didn't hit 'em just right either.

“'What will we wait for?' says Kyle.

“'Exercise—and the kind you won't take when you get as old and as
sensible as me. You're taking long chances, both of you; but it's just
like playing cards, you might as well put all your money on the first
turn, win or lose, as to try and play system. Systems don't work in
faro, nor love affairs, nor any other game of chance. Be gone. Put your
marker on the grand raffle. In other words take the first horse to town
and get married. Ten chances to one Jonesy will have the laugh on you
before the year is out.'

“'I don't think you are a bit nice to-day, Red,' says Loys.

“'He's jealous,' says Kyle.

“'That's what I am, young man,' says I. 'If I had ten years off my
shoulders, and a little of the glow off my hair, I'd give you a run for
your alley that would leave you breathless at the wind-up.'

“'I think your hair is a beautiful color, Red,' says Loys. 'Many a
woman would like to have it.'

“'Of course they would,' I answered. 'But they don't get it. I'm
foxy, I am.' Still I was touched in a tender spot. That young woman
knew Just the right thing to say, by nature. 'Well, what are you young
folks going to do?' I asked them.

“They decided that they'd think it over until next day, but that
turned out to be too late, for what must Kyle do but get chucked from
his horse and have his leg broke near the hip. You don't want to take
any love affairs onto the back of a bad horse, now you mark me! There
was no such thing as downing that boy when he was in his right mind.

“Now here was a hurrah! Loys, she dasn't cry, for fear of uncle, and
Kyle, he used the sinfullest language known to the tongue of man. 'Twas
the first time I'd ever heard him say anything much, but he made it
clear that it wasn't because he couldn't.

“'When you ask me that, you've pulled the right bell,' says I. 'I'll
tell you exactly what we'll do. I go for the doctor. Savvy? Well, I
bring back the minister at the same time. Angevine, he loses the Jersey
cow over in the cane-break, and uncle and Angevine go hunting her, for
not even Loys is ace high in uncle's mind alongside that cow. The rest
is easy.'

“'Red, you're a brick—you're the best fellow alive,' says Kyle,
nearly squeezing the hand off me.

“'I've tried to conceal it all my life, but I knew it would be
discovered some day,' says I. 'Well, I suppose I'd better break the
news to Loys—'twouldn't be any more than polite.'

“'Oh, Lord! I wonder if she'll be willing?' says he.

“'No reason I shouldn't turn an honest dollar on the
transaction—I'll bet you a month's wages she is,' says I. He wanted to
do it, thinking I was in earnest, but I laughed at him.

“She was willing all right—even anxious. There's some women, and
men, too, for that matter, who go through life like a cat through a
back alley, not caring a cuss for either end or the middle. They would
have been content to wait. Not so Loys. She wanted her Kyle, her poor
Kyle, and she wanted him quick. That's the kind of people for me! Your
cautious folk are all the time falling down wells because their eyes
are up in the air, keeping tabs so that they can dodge shooting stars.

“Now, I had a minister friend up in town, Father Slade by name. No,
he was not a Catholic, I think. They called him 'Father' because it
fitted him. His church had a steeple on it, anyhow, so it was no
maverick. Just what particular kind of religion the old man had I don't
know, but I should say he was a homeopath on a guess. He looked it.
'Twas a comfort to see him coming down the street, his old face shining
in his white hair like a shrivelled pink apple in a snowdrift,
God-blessing everything in sight—good, bad, or indifferent. He had
something pleasant to say to all. We was quite friends, and every once
in a while we'd have a chin about things.

“'Are you keeping straight, Red?' he'd ask when we parted.

“'Um,' I'd say, 'I'm afraid you'd notice a bend here and there, if
you Slid your eyes along the edge.'

“I knew the old man would do me a favour if it could be done, so I
pulled out easy in my mind.

“First place, I stopped at the doctor's, because I felt they might
fix up the marrying business some other time, but if a leg that's broke
in the upper joint ain't set right, you can see a large dark-complected
hunk of trouble over the party's left shoulder for the rest of his
days. The doctor was out, so I left word for him what was wanted, and
to be ready when I got back, and pulled for Father Slade's. The old
gentleman had the rheumatism, and he groaned when I come in.
Rheumatism's no disease for people who can't swear.

“'How are you, my boy?' says he; 'I'm glad to see you. Here am I, an
old man, nipped by the leg, and much wanting to talk to somebody.'

“I passed the time of day to him, but felt kind of blue. This didn't
look like keeping my word with the kids. I really hated to say anything
to the old man, knowing his disposition; still I felt I had to, and I
out with my story.

“'Dear! dear!' says he. 'The hurry and skurry of young folks! How
idle it seems when you get fifty years away from it, and see how little
anything counts! For all that, I thank God,' says he, 'that there's a
little red left in my blood yet, which makes me sympathise with them.
But the girl's people object you say?'

“I made that all clear to him. The girl's always all right,
Father,' says I, 'and as for the man in this case, my word for him.'

“Now it ain't just the right thing for me to say, but seeing as I've
never had anything in particular to be modest about, and I'm proud of
what the old gentleman told me, I'm going to repeat it.

“'Your word is good for me, Red,' says he. 'You're a mischievous boy
at times, but your heart and your head are both reliable; give me your
arm to the waggon.'

“Then I felt mighty sorry to think of lugging that poor old man all
that ways.

“'Here!' says I. 'Now you sit down again; don't you do anything of
the sort—you ain't fit.'

“He put his hand on my shoulder and hobbled his weight off the game
leg.

“'Reddy, I was sitting there thinking when you came in—thinking of
how comfortable it was to be in an easy-chair with my foot on a stool,
and then I thought, “If the Lord should send me some work to do, would
I be willing?” Now, thanks be to Him! I am willing, and glad to find
myself so, and I do not believe there's any work more acceptable to Him
than the union of young folk who love each other. Ouch!' says he, as
that foot touched the ground. 'Perhaps you'd better pick me up and
carry me bodily.'

“So I did it, the old housekeeper following us with an armful of
things and jawing the both of us—him for a fool and me for a villain.
She was a strong-minded old lady, and I wish I could remember some of
her talk—it was great.

“We went around and got the doctor.

“'Hoo!' says he. 'Is it as bad as that?' I winked at Father Slade.

“'It's a plenty worse than that,' says I; 'you won't know the half
of it till you get down there.'

“But of course we had to tell him, and he was tickled. Funny what an
interest everybody takes in these happenings. He wanted all the
details.

“'By Jove!' says he, 'the man whose feelings ain't the least dimmed
by a broken leg—horse rolled on him, you said? Splintered it,
probably—that man is one of the right sort. He'll do to tie to.'

“When we reached the ranch the boys were lined up to meet us. 'Hurry
along!' they called. 'Angey can't keep uncle amused all day!'

“So we hustled. Kyle was for being married first, and then having
his leg set, but I put my foot down flat. It had gone long enough now,
and I wasn't going to have him cripping it all his life. But the doctor
worked like a man who gets paid by the piece, and in less than no time
we were able to call Loys in.

“Wind-River Smith spoke to get to give the bride away, and we let
him have it.

“We'd just got settled to business when in comes Angevine, puffing
like a buffalo. 'For Heaven's sakes! Ain't you finished yet?' says he;
'well, you want to be at it, for the old man ain't over two minutes
behind me, coming fast. I took the distance in ten-foot steps. Just my
luck! Foot slipped when I was talking to him, and I dropped a remark
that made him suspicious—I wouldn't have done it for a ton of
money—but it's too late now. I'll down him and hold him out there if
you say so.'

“Well, sir, at this old Father Slade stood right up, forgetting that
foot entirely.

“'Children, be ready,' says he, and he went over the line for a
record.

“'Hurry there!' hollers old Bob from the outside, where he was on
watch; 'here comes uncle up the long coulee!'

“'What are your names?' says Father Slade. They told him, both
red'ning.

“'Do you, Kyle, take this woman, Loys, to have and keep track of,
come hell or high water, her heirs and assigns for ever?'—or such a
matter—says he, all in one breath, They both said they did.

“Things flew till we came to the ring. There was a hitch. We had
plumb forgotten that important article. For a minute I felt stingy;
then I cussed myself for a mean old long-horn, and dived into my box.

“'Here, take this!' I says. 'It was my mother's!'

“'Oh, Red! You mustn't part with that!' cried Loys, her eyes filling
up.

“'Don't waste time talking; I put through what I tackle. Hurry,
please, Father.'

“'Has anybody any objections to these proceedings?' says he.

“'I have,' says I, 'but I won't mention 'em. Give them the verdict.'

“'I pronounce you man and wife. Let us pray,' says he.

“'What's that?' screeches Uncle Jonesy from the doorway. And then he
gave us the queerest prayer you ever heard in your life. He stood on
one toe and clawed chunks out of the air while he delivered it.

“He seemed to have it in for me in particular. 'You villain! You
rascal! You red-headed rascal! You did this! I know you did!'

“'Oh, uncle!' says I, 'forgive me!' With that I hugged him right up
to me, and he filled my bosom full of smothered language.

“'Cheese it, you little cuss!' I whispered in his ear, 'or I'll
break every rib in your poor old chest!' I came in on him a trifle,
Just to show him what I could do if I tried.

“'Nuff!' he wheezes. 'Quit. 'Nuff.'

“'Go up and congratulate 'em,' I whispered again.

“'I won't,' says he. 'Ouch! Yes, I will! I will!' So up he goes,
grinding his teeth.

“'I wish you every happiness,' he grunts.

“'Won't you forgive me, uncle?' begs Loys.

“'Some other time; some other time!' he hollers, and he pranced out
of the house like a hosstyle spider, the maddest little man in the
Territory.

“Loys had a hard time of it until Kyle got so he could travel, and
they went up to the Yellowstone with a team for a wedding trip.

“The rest of Loys's folks was in an unpleasant frame of mind, too.
They sent out her brother, and while I'd have took most anything from
Loys's brother, there comes a place where human nature is human nature,
and the upshot of it was I planked that young man gently but firmly
across my knees. Suffering Ike! But he was one sassy young man!
Howsomever, the whole outfit came round in time—all except uncle and
me. He used to grit his teeth together till the sparks flew when he saw
me. I was afraid he'd bust a blood-vessel in one of them fits, so I
quit. I hated to let go of the old ranch, but I'm pretty well
fixed—I'm superintendent here. It's Kyle's ranch, you know. That's his
brand—the queer-looking thing on the left hip of that critter, over
the vented hash-knife. Loys's invention, that is. She says it's a
cherublim, but we call it the 'flying flap-jack.' There's a right smart
lot of beef critters toting that signal around this part of the
country. Kyle's one of the fellers that rises like a setting of
bread—quiet and gentle, but steady and sure. He's going to the State
Legislature next year. 'Twon't do no harm to have one honest man in the
outfit.

“Now, perhaps if I'd married some nice woman I might have had 1,000
steers of my own, and a chance to make rules and regulations for my
feller-citizens—and then again I might have took to gambling and
drinking and raising blazes, and broke my poor wife's broom-handle with
my hard head. So I reckon we'll let it slide as it is. Now you straddle
that cayuse of yours and come along with me and I'll show you some
rattling colts.”

Reddy was on the station platform, walking up and down, looking
about him anxiously. We caught sight of each other at the same time.

“Hi, there!” said he and jumped for me. “Gad-dog your little hide!”
he cried as he put my right hand in line for a pension. “I thought I
was booked to go without saying good-bye to you—you got the note I
pinned on your shack?”

“Sure.”

“Well, there's time for a chin before the choo-choo starts—thought
I'd be early, not savvying this kind of travelling a great deal. Darned
if you ain't growed since I saw you—getting fat, too! Well, how's
everything? I didn't say nothing to the other boys about pulling my
freight, as I wanted to go sober for once. You explain to 'em that old
Red's head ain't swelled, will you? Seems kind of dirty to go off that
way, but I'm bound for God's country and the old-time folks, and
somehow I feel that I must cut the budge out of it. 'Nother thing is
I'm superstitious, as you may or may not have noticed, and I believe if
you try the same game twicet you'll get just as different results as
can be the second time—you heard how I hit it in the mines, didn't
you? No? Well, that's so; you dint seen many people out on the flat,
have you? Hum. I don't know principally where to begin. You remember
Wind-River Smith's pardner that the boys called Shadder, because he was
so thin? Nice feller, always willing to do you a favour, or say
something comical when you least expected it—had kind of a style with
him, too. Yes, sir, that's the man. Well him and me was out in the Bend
one day, holding a mess of Oregon half-breeds that was to be shipped by
train shortly, when old Smithy comes with the mail. 'Letter for you,
Shadder,' says Smith, and passes over a big envelope with wads of
sealing wax all over it. Shadder reads his letter, and folds it up.
Then he takes a look over the county—the kind of a look a man gives
when he's thinking hard. Then says he, 'Red, take off your hat.' I done
it. 'Smithy, take off your hat.' 'All right,' says Smith; 'but you tell
me why, or I'll snake the shirt off you to square things.'

“Wish't you could have seen old Smithy's face as he read it! He
thought his pardner had been cut out of his herd for ever.

“'It's the God's truth, Red,' says he slowly, and he had a sideways
smile on his face as he turned to Shadder. 'Well, sir,' says he, 'I
suppose congratulations are in order?'

“Shadder's hand stopped short on its way to the cigarette, and he
looked at Smithy as if he couldn't believe what he saw.

“'To hell with 'em!' says he, as savage as a wildcat, and he jabbed
the irons in and whirled his cayuse about on one toe, heading for the
ranch.

“'Now you go after him, you jealous old sore-head,' says I. 'Go on!'
I says, as he started to argue the point, 'or I'll spread your nose all
the way down your spinal column!' The only time to say 'no' to me is
when I'm not meaning what I say, so away goes Wind-River, and they made
it up all right in no time. Well, Shadder had to pull for England to
take a squint at the ancestral estates, and all of us was right here at
this station to see him off—Lord! it seems as if that happened last
world!—well, it took a little bit the edge off any and all drunks a
ranch as an institution had ever seen before. There was old Smithy
crying around, wiping his eyes on his sleeve, and explaining to a lot
of Eastern folks that it wasn't Shadder's fault—gad-hook it all! He
was the best, hootin', tootin' son-of-a-sea-cook that ever hit a
prairie breeze, in spite of this dum foolishness.

“And Shadder never lost his patience at all, though it must have
been kind of trying to be made into such a holy show before the kind of
people he used to be used to. All he'd say was 'Bet your life, old
boy!' Well, it was right enough too, as Smithy had nursed him through
small-pox one winter up in the Shoshonee country, and mighty near
starved himself to death feeding Shadder out of the slim grub stock,
when the boy was on the mend; still some people would have forgot that.

“But did your uncle Red get under the influence of strong drink? DID
he? Oh my! Oh MY! I wish I could make it clear to you. The
vigilantes put after a horse thief once in Montana, and they landed on
him in a butt-end canon, and there was all the stock with the brands on
'em as big as a patent medicine sign, as the lad hadn't had time to
stop for alterations.

“'Well,' says they, 'what have you got to say for yourself?' He
looked at them brands staring him in the face, and he bit off a small
hunk of chewing 'Ptt-chay!' Says he, 'Gentlemen, I'm at a loss for
words!' And they let him go, as a good joke is worth its price in any
man's country. I'm in that lad's fix; I ain't got the words to tell you
how seriously drunk I was on that occasion. I remember putting for what
I thought was the hotel, and settling down, thinking there must be a
lulu of a scrap in the barroom from the noise; then somebody gave me a
punch in the ribs and says, 'Where's your ticket?' and I don't know
what I said nor what he said after that, but it must have been all
right. Then it got light and I met a lot of good friends I never saw
before nor since; then more noise and trouble and at last I woke
up.—in a hotel bedroom, all right, but not the one I was used to. I
went to the window, heaved her open and looked out. It was a bully
morning and I felt A1. There was a nice range of mountains out in front
of me that must have come up during' the night. 'I'd like to know where
I am,' I thinks. 'But somebody will tell me before long, so there is no
use worrying about that—the main point is, have I been touched?' I dug
down into my jeans and there wasn't a thing of any kind to remember me
by. 'No,' I says to myself, 'I ain't been touched—I've been
grabbed—they might have left me the price of a breakfast! Well, it's a
nice looking country, anyhow!' So down I walks to the office. A
cheerful-seeming plump kind of a man was sitting behind the desk.
'Hello!' says he, glancing up and smiling as I came in. 'How do you
open up this morning?'

“'Somebody saved me the trouble,' says I. 'I'm afraid I'll have to
give you the strong arm for breakfast.'

“He grinned wide. 'Oh, it ain't as bad as that, I hardly reckon,'
says he. He dove into a safe and brought out a cigar-box.

“'When a gentleman's in the condition you was in last night,' he
says, 'I always make it a point to go through his clothes and take out
anything a stranger might find useful, trusting that there won't be no
offence the next morning. Here's your watch and the rest of your
valuables, including the cash—count your money and see if it's right.'

“Well, sir! I was one happy man, and I thanked that feller as I
thumbed over the bills, but when I got up to a hundred and seventy I
begun to feel queer. Looked like I'd made good money on the trip.

“'Why, the watch and the gun, and the other things is all right,'
says I. 'But I'm now fifty dollars to the good, even figuring that I
didn't spend a cent, which ain't in the least likely, and here's
ten-dollar bills enough to make a bed-spread left over.'

“'Pshaw!' says he. 'Blame it! I've mixed your plunder up with the
mining gentleman that came in at the same time. You and him was bound
to fight at first, and then you both turned to to lick me, and what
with keeping you apart and holding you off, and taking your valuables
away from you all at the same time, and me all alone here as it was the
night-man's day-off, I've made a blunder of it. Just take your change
out of the wad, and call for a drink on me when you feel like it, will
you?'

“I said I would do that, and moreover that he was an officer and a
gentleman, and that I'd stay at his hotel two weeks at least to show my
appreciation, no matter where it was, but to satisfy a natural
curiosity, I'd like to know what part of the country I was at present
inhabiting.

“'You're at Boise, Idaho,' says he, 'one of the best little towns in
the best little Territory in the United States of America, including
Alaska.'

“'Well . . .' says I. 'Well . . .' for again I was at a loss for
words. I had no idea I'd gone so far from home. 'I believe what you
say,' says I. 'What do you do around these parts?'

“'Mining,' says he. 'You're just in time—big strike in the Bob-cat
district. Poor man's mining. Placer, and durned good placer, right on
the top of the ground. The mining gentleman I spoke about is having his
breakfast now. Suppose you go in and have a talk with him? Nice man,
drunk or sober, although excitable when he's had a little too much, or
not quite enough. He might put you onto a good thing. I'm not a mining
person myself.'

“'Thanks,' says I, and in I went to the dining room.

There was a great, big, fine-looking man eating his ham and eggs the
way I like to see a man eat the next morning. He had a black beard that
was so strong it fairly jumped out from his face.

“'Well, I wouldn't care to bet on that without going a little deeper
into the subject,' says I; 'but it smells good at least—so does that
ham and eggs. Mary, I'll take the same, with coffee extra strong.'

“'You have doubtless been attracted to our small but growing city
from the reports—which are happily true—of the inexhaustible mineral
wealth of the surrounding region?' says he.

“'No-o—not exactly,' says I; 'but I do want to hear something about
mines. Mr. Hotel-man out there (who's a gentleman of the old school if
ever there lived one) told me that you might put me on to a good
thing.'

“'Precisely,' says he. 'Now, sir, my name is Jones—Agamemnon G.
Jones—and my pardner, Mr. H. Smith, is on a business trip, selling
shares of our mine, which we have called “The Treasury” from reasons
which we can make obvious to any investor. The shares, Mr. ———'

“'Saunders—Red Saunders—Chantay Seeche Red.'

“'Mr. Saunders, are fifty cents apiece, which price is really only
put upon them to avoid the offensive attitude of dealing them out as
charity. As a matter of fact, this mine of ours contains a store of
gold which would upset the commercial world, were the bare facts of its
extent known. There is neither sense nor amusement in confining such
enormous treasure in the hands of two people. Consequently, my pardner
and I are presenting an interest to the public, putting the nominal
figure of fifty cents a share upon it, to save the feelings of our
beneficiaries.'

“'What the devil do I care?' says I. 'I'm looking for a chance to
dig—could you tell a man where to go?'

“'Oh!' says he, 'when you come to that, that's different. Strictly
speaking, my pardner Hy hasn't gone off on a business trip. As a matter
of fact, he left town night before last with two-thirds of the money
we'd pulled out of a pocket up on Silver Creek, in the company of two
half-breed Injuns, a Chinaman, and four more sons-of-guns not
classified, all in such a state of beastly intoxication that their
purpose, route, and destination are matters of the wildest conjecture.
I've been laying around town here hating myself to death, thinking
perhaps I could sell some shares in a mine that we'll find yet, if we
have good luck. If you want to go wild-catting over the hills and far
away, I'm your huckleberry.'

“'That hits me all right,' says I. 'For, what I don't know about
mining, nobody don't know. When do we start?'

“'This, or any other minute,' says he, getting up from the table.

“'Wait till I finish up these eggs,' says I. 'And there's a matter
of one drink coming to me outside—I may as well put that where it
won't harm any one else before we start.'

“I swallered the rest of my breakfast whole and hustled out to the
bar, where my friend and the Hotel-man was waiting. 'Now I'll take that
drink that's coming, and rather than be small about it, I'll buy one
for you too, and then we're off,' says I.

“'You won't do no such thing,' says the Hotel-man. 'It's a horse on
me, and I'll supply the liquor. Mr. Jones is in the play as much as
anybody.'

“So the Hotel-man set 'em up, and that made one drink. Then Jones
said he'd never let a drink suffer from lonesomeness yet when he had
the price, and that made two drinks. I had to uphold the honour of the
ranch, and that made three drinks. Hotel-man said it was up-sticks now,
and he meant to pay his just debts like an honest man, and that made
four drinks, then Jones said—well, by this time I see I needn't have
hurried breakfast so much. More people came in. I woke up the next
morning in the same old bedroom. Every breakfast Aggy and me got ready
to pull for the mines, and every morning I woke up in the bedroom. I
should like to draw a veil over the next two weeks, but it would have
to be a pretty strong veil to hold it. I tried to keep level with Aggy,
but he'd spend three dollars to my one, and the consequence of that was
that we went broke within fifteen minutes of each other.

“Well, sir, we were a mournful pair to draw to that day. We sat
there and cussed and said, 'Now, why didn't we do this, that, and
t'other thing instead of blowing our hard earned dough?'—till bimeby
we just dripped melancholy, you might say. Howsomever, we weren't
booked for a dull time just yet. That afternoon there was a great
popping of whips like an Injun skirmish and into town comes a bull
train half-a-mile long. Twelve yoke of bulls to the team; lead, swing,
and trail waggons for each, as big as houses on wheels. You don't see
the like of that in this country. Down the street they come, the dust
flying, whips cracking and the lads hollering 'Whoa haw, Mary—up
there! Wherp! whoa haw.'

“And those fellers had picked up dry throats, walking in the dust.
Also, they had a month's wages aching in their pockets. We hadn't much
mor'n got the thump of their arrival out of our ears, when who comes
roaring into town but the Bengal Tiger gang, and they had four months'
wages. Owner of the mine got on a bender and paid everybody off by
mistake. You can hardly imagine how this livened up things. There ain't
nobody less likely to play lame-duck than me, but there was no dodging
the hospitality. The only idea prevailing was to be rid of the money as
soon as possible. The effects showed right off. You could hear one man
telling the folks for their own good that he was the Old Missouri
River, and when he felt like swelling his banks, it was time for
parties who couldn't swim to hunt the high ground; whilst the gentleman
on the next corner let us know that he was a locomotive carrying three
hundred pounds of steam with the gauge still climbing and the blower
on. When he whistled three times, he said, any intelligent man would
know that there was danger around.

“Well, sir, I put the Old Missouri River to bed that night, and he'd
flattened out to a very small streamlet indeed, while the locomotive
went lame before supper, and had to be put in the round-house by a
couple of pushers. That's the way with fine ideas. Cold facts comes and
puts a crimp in them. Once I knew a small feller I could have stuck in
my pocket and forgot about, but when we went out and took several
prescriptions together on a day, he spoke to me like this. 'Red,' says
he, 'put your little hand in mine, and we'll go and take a bird's-eye
view of the Universe.' Astonishin' idea, wasn't it? And him not
weighing over a hundred pound. Howsomever, he didn't take any
bird's-eye view of the Universe—he only become strikingly indisposed.

“Well, to get back to Boise, you never in all your life saw so many
men and brothers as was gathered there that day, and old Aggy, he was
one of the centres of attraction. That big voice and black beard was
always where the crowd was thickest, and the wet goods flowing the
freest. 'Gentlemen!' says he, 'Let's lift up our voices in melody!'
That was one of Ag's delusions—he thought he could sing. So four of
'em got on top of a billiard table and presented 'Rocked in the Cradle
of the Deep' to the company, which made me feel glad that I hadn't been
brought up that way. After Ag had hip-locked the last low note, another
song-bird volunteered.

“This was a little fat Dutchman, with pale blue eyes and a mustache
like two streaks of darning cotton. He had come to town to sell a pair
of beef-steers, but got drawn into the general hilarity, and now he
didn't care a cuss whether he, she, or it ever sold another steer. He
got himself on end and sung 'Leeb Fadderlont moxtrue eckstein' in a
style that made you wonder that the human nose could stand the strain.

“'Aw, cheese that!' says a feller near the door. 'Come get your
steers, one of 'em's just chased the barber up a telegraph pole!'

“So then we all piled out into the street to see the steers. Sure
enough, there was the barber, sitting on the cross-piece, and the steer
pawing dirt underneath.

“'He done made me come a fast heat from de cohner,' says the barber.
'I kep' hollerin' “next!” but he ain't pay no 'tention—he make it
“next” fur me, shuah! Yah, yah, yah! You gents orter seen me start at
de bottom, an' slide all de way up disyer telegraft pole!'

“One of the bull-whackers went out to rope the steers, and Ag gave
directions from the sidewalk. He wasn't very handy with a riata, and
that's a fact, but the way Ag lit into him was scandalous. When he'd
missed about six casts of his rope, Ag opened up on him:

“'Put a stamp on it and send it to him by mail,' says Aggy, in his
sourcastic way. 'Address it, “Bay Steer, middle of Main St., Boise,
Idaho. If not delivered within ten days, return to owner, who can use
it to hang himself.” Blast my hide if I couldn't stand here and throw a
box-car nearer to the critter! Well, well, WELL! How many left
hands have you got, anyhow? Do it up in a wad and heave it at him for
general results—he might get tangled in it.'

“It rattled the bull-whacker, having so much attention drawn to him,
and he stepped on the rope and twisted himself up in it and was flying
light generally.

“'Say!' says Ag, appealing to the crowd, 'won't some kind friend
who's fond of puzzles go down and help that gentleman do himself?'

“That made the whacker mad. He was as red in the face as a lobster.

“'You come down and show what you can do,” says he. 'You've
got gas enough for a balloon ascension, but that may be all there is to
you.'

“'Oh, I ain't so much,' says Aggy, 'although I'm as good a man
to-day as ever I was in my life—but I have a little friend here who
can rope, down, and ride that critter from here to the brick-front in
five minutes by the watch; and if you've got a twenty-five dollar bill
in your pocket, or its equivalent in dust, you can observe the
experiment.'

“'I'll go you, by gosh!' says the bull-whacker, slapping his hat on
the ground and digging for his pile.

“'Say, if you're referring to me, Ag,' I says, 'it's kind of a
sudden spring—I ain't what you might call in training, and that steer
is full of triple-extract of giant powder.'

“'G'wan!' says Ag. 'You can do it—and then we're twenty-five
ahead.'

“'But suppose we lose?'

“'Well . . . It won't be such an awful loss.'

“'Now you look here, Agamemnon G. Jones,' says I, 'I ain't going to
stand for putting up a summer breeze ag'in' that feller's good
dough—that's a skin game, to speak it pleasantly.'

“Then Aggy argues the case with me, and when Aggy started to argue,
you might just as well 'moo' and chase yourself into the corral,
because he'd get you, sure. Why, that man could sit in the cabin and
make roses bloom right in the middle of the floor; whilst he was
singing his little song you could see 'em and smell 'em; he could talk
a snowbank off a high divide in the middle of February. Never see
anybody with such a medicine tongue, and in a big man it was all the
stranger. 'Now,' he winds up, 'as for cheating that feller, you
ought to know me better, Red—why, I'll give him my note!'

“So, anyhow, I done it. Up the street we went, steer bawling and
buck-jumping, my hair a-flying, and me as busy as the little bee you
read about keeping that steer underneath me, 'stead of on top of me,
where he'd ruther be, and after us the whole town, whoopin', yellin',
crackin' off six-shooters, and carryin' on wild.

“Then we had twenty-five dollars and was as good as anybody. But it
didn't last long. The tin-horns come out after pay-day, like hop-toads
after a rain. 'Twould puzzle the Government at Washington to know where
they hang out in the meantime. There was one lad had a face on him with
about as much expression as a hotel punkin pie. He run an arrow game,
and he talked right straight along in a voice that had no more bends in
it than a billiard cue.

“'Here's where you get your three for one any child may do it no
chance to lose make your bets while the arrow of fortune swings all
gents accommodated in amounts from two-bits to double-eagles and bets
paid on the nail,' says he.

“'Red,' says Aggy, 'I can double our pile right here—let me have
the money. I know this game.' You'd hardly believe it, but I dug up.
'Double-or-quits?' says he to the dealer.

“'Let her go,' says the dealer; the arrow swung around. 'Quits,'
says the dealer, and raked in my dough. It was all over in one second.

“I grabbed Aggy by the shoulder and took him in the corner for a
private talk. 'I thought you knew this game?' says I.

“'I do,' says he. 'That's the way it always happens.' And once more
in my life I experienced the peculiar feeling of being altogether at a
loss for words.

“'Aggy,' says I at last, 'I've got a good notion to lay two violent
hands on you, and wind you up like an eight-day clock, but rather than
make hard feelings between friends, I'll refrain. Besides you are a
funny cuss, that's sure. One thing, boy, you can mark down. We leave
here to-morrow morning.'

“'All right,' says Ag. 'This sporting life is the very devil. I like
out doors as well as the next man, when I get there.'

“So the morrow morning, away we went. All we had for kit was the
picks, shovels, and pans; the rest of our belongings was staying with
the Hotel-man until we made a rise.

“Ag said he'd be cussed if he'd walk. A hundred and fifty miles of a
stroll was too many.

“'But we ain't got a cent to pay the stage fare,' says I.

“'Borrow it of Uncle Hotel-keep,' says he.

“'Not by a town site,' says I. 'We owe him all we're going to, at
this very minute—you'll have to hoof it, that's all.'

“'I tell you I won't. I don't like to have anybody walk on my feet,
not even myself. I can stand off that stage driver so easy, that you'll
wonder I don't take it up as a profession. Now, don't raise any more
objections—please don't,' says he. 'I can't tell you how nervous you
make me, always finding some fault with everything I try to do. That's
no way for a hired man to act, let alone a pardner.'

“So, of course, he got the best of me as usual, and we climbed into
the stage when she come along. Now, our bad luck seemed to hold,
because you wouldn't find many men in that country who wouldn't stake
two fellers to a waggon ride wherever they wanted to go, and be
pleasant about it, I'd have sure seen that the man got paid, even if
Aggy forgot it, but the man that drove us was the surliest brute that
ever growled. When you'd speak to him, he'd say, 'Unh'—a style of
thing that didn't go well in that part of the country. I kept my mouth
shut, as knowing that I didn't have the come-up-with weighed on my
spirits; but Aggy gave him the jolly. He only meant it in fun, and
there was plenty of reason for it, too, for you never seen such a game
of driving as that feller put up in all your life. The Lord save us! He
cut around one corner of a mountain, so that for the longest second
I've lived through, my left foot hung over about a thousand feet of
fresh air. I'd have had time to write my will before I touched bottom
if we'd gone over. I don't know as I turned pale, but my hair ain't
been of the same rosy complexion since.

“'Well!' says Aggy in a surprised tone of voice when we got all four
wheels on the ground again. 'Here we are!' says he. 'Who'd have
suspected it? I thought he was going to take the short cut down to the
creek.'

“The driver turned round with one corner of his lip h'isted—a dead
ringer of a mean man—Says he to Aggy, 'Yer a funny bloke, ain't yer?'

“'Why!' says Ag, 'that's for you to say—wouldn't look well coming
from me—but if you press me, I'll admit I give birth to a little gem
now and then.'

“'Why, I hear you as plain as though you set right next me,' says
Ag. 'Now, you listen and see if I'm audible at the same range—You're a
blasted chump!' he roars, in a tone of voice that would have carried
forty mile. Did you hear that, Red?' he asks very innocent. I
was so hot at the driver's sass—the cussed low-downness of doing a
feller a favour and then heaving it at him—that you could have lit a
match on me anywheres, but to save me I couldn't help laughing—Ag had
the comicallest way!

“At that the driver begins to larrup the horses. I ain't the kind to
feel faint when a cayuse gets what's coming to him for raising the
devil, but to see that lad whale his team because there wasn't nothing
else he dared hit, got me on my hind legs. I nestled one hand in his
hair and twisted his ugly mug back.

“'Quit that!' says I.

“'You let me be—I ain't hurting you,' he hollers.

“'That ain't to say I won't be hurting you soon,' says I. 'You put
the bud on them horses again, and I'll boot the spine of your back up
through the top of your head till it stands out like a flag-staff. Just
one more touch, and you get it!' says I.

“He didn't open his mouth again till we come to the river. Then he
pulled up. 'This is about as far as I care to carry you two gents for
nothin',' he says. 'Of course you're two to one, and I can't do nothing
if you see fit to bull the thing through. But I'll say this: if either
one or both of you roosters has got the least smell of a gentleman
about him, he won't have to be told his company ain't wanted twice.'

“Now, mind you, Ag and me didn't have the first cussed thing—not
grub, nor blankets, nor gun, nor nothing; and this the feller well
knew.

“'Red,' says Aggy, 'what do you say to pulling this thing apart and
seeing what makes it act so?'

“'No,' says I, 'don't touch it—it might be catching. Now, you
whelp!' says I to the driver, 'you tell us if there's a place where we
can get anything to eat around here?' We'd expected to go hungry until
we hit the camp some forty mile further on, where we knew there'd be
plenty for anybody that wanted it.

“'Yes,' says he; 'there's a man running a shack two mile up the
river.'

“'All right,' says I. 'Drive on. You've played us as dirty a trick
as one man can play another. If we ever get a cinch on you, you can
expect we'll pull her till the latigoes snap.'

“He kept shut till he got across the river, where he felt safe.

“'It's all right about that cinch!' he hollers back, grinning. 'Only
wait till you get it, yer suckers! Sponges! Beats! Dead-heads! Yah!'

“Well, a man can't catch a team of horses, and that's all there is
about it, but I want to tell you he was on the anxious seat for a
quarter of a mile. We tried hard.

“When we got back to where we started and could breathe again, we
held a council of war.

“'Now Aggy,' says I, 'we're dumped—what shall we do?'

He sat there awhile looking around him, snapping pebbles with his
thumb.

“'Tell you what it is, Red,' he says at last, 'we might as well go
mining right here. This is likely gravel, and there's a river. If that
bar in front of you had been further in the mountains, it would have
been punched full of holes. It's only because it's on the road that
nobody's taken the trouble to see what was in it. This road was made by
cattle ranchers, that didn't know nothing about mining, and every miner
that's gone over the trail had his mouth set to get further along as
quick as possible—just like us. Do you see that little hollow running
down to the river? Well you try your luck there. I give you that place
as it's the most probable, and you as a tenderfoot in the business will
have all the luck. I'll make a stab where I am.'

“Well, sir, it sounds queer to tell it, and it seems queerer still
to think of the doing of it, but I hadn't dug two feet before I come to
bed rock, and there was some heavy black chunks.

“'Aggy,' says I, 'what's these things?' throwing one over to him. He
caught it and Stared at it.

“'Where did you get that?' says he, in almost a whisper.

“'Why, out of the hole, of course!' says I, laughing. 'Come take a
look!'

“Aggy wasn't the kind of man to go off the handle over trifles, but
when he looked into that hole he turned perfectly green. His knees give
out from under him and he sat on the ground like a man in a trance,
wiping the sweat off his face with a motion like a machine.

“'What the devil ails you?' says I astonished. I thought maybe I'd
done something I hadn't ought to do, through ignorance of the rules and
regulations of mining.

“'Red,' says he dead solemn, 'I've mined for twenty year, and from
Old Mexico to Alaska, but I never saw anything that was ace-high to
that before. Gold laying loose in chunks on top of the bed-rock is too
much for me—I wish Hy could see this.'

“'Gold!' says I. 'What you talking about? What have those black
hunks to do with gold?'

“The only answer he made was to lay the one I had thrown to him on
top of a rock and hit her a crack with a pick. Then he handed it to me.
Sure enough! There under the black was the yeller. Of course, it I'd
known more about the business I could have told it by the weight, but
I'd never seen a piece of gold fresh off the farm before in my life. I
hadn't the slightest idea what it looked like, and I learned afterward
it all looks different. Some of it shines up yaller in the start; some
of it's red, and some is like ours, coated black with iron-crust.

“So I looked at Ag, and Ag looked at me, neither one of us believing
anything at all for awhile. I simply couldn't get hold of the thing—I
ain't yet, for that matter. I expect to wake up and find it a pipe
dream, and in some ways I wouldn't mind if it was. I never was so
completely two men as I was on that occasion. One of 'em was hopping
around and hollering with Ag, yelling 'hooray!' and the other didn't
take much interest in the proceedings at all. And it wasn't until I
thought, 'Now I can pay that cussed cayote of a stage driver what I owe
him!' that I got any good out of it. That brought it home to me. When I
spoke to Ag about paying the driver, he says, 'That's so,' then he
takes a quick look around. 'We can pay him in full, too, old horse!' he
hollers, and there was a most joyful smile on his face.

“'Red,' say he, 'do you know this is the only ford on the river
for—I don't know how many miles—perhaps the whole length of her?'

“'Well?' says I.

“'Our little placer claim,' says Aggy slowly, rubbing his hands
together, 'covers that ford; and by a judicious taking up of claims for
various uncles and brothers and friends of ours along the creek on the
lowlands, we can fix it so they can't even bridge it.'

“'Do you mean they can't cross our claim if we say they can't?'

“'Sure thing!' says Aggy. 'There's you and me and the law to say
“no” to that—I wish I had a gun.'

“'You don't need any gun for that skunk of a driver.'

“'Of course not, but there'll be passengers, and there's no telling
how excited them passengers will be when they find they've got to go
over the hills ford-hunting.'

“'Are you going to send 'em all around, Ag?'

“'The whole bunch. Anybody coming back from the diggings has gold in
his clothes, so it won't hurt 'em none, and I propose to give that
stage line an advertising that won't do it a bit of good. Come along,
Red; let's see that lad that has the shack up the river. We need
something to eat, and maybe he's got a gun. If he's a decent feller,
we'll let him in on a claim. Never mind about the hole!—it won't run
away, and there's nobody to touch anything—come on.'

“So we went up the river. The man's name was White, and he was a
white man by nature, too. He fed us well, and was just as hot as us
when we told him about the stage driver's trick. Then we told him about
the find and let him in.

“'Now,' says Aggy, 'have you got a gun?'

“'I have that,' says the man. 'My dad used to be a
duck-hunter on Chesapeake bay. When you say “gun,” I'll show you
a gun.' He dove in under his bunk and fetched out what I should say was
a number one bore shot gun, with barrels six foot long.

“'Gentlemen,' says he, holding the gun up and patting it lovingly,
'if you ram a quarter-pound of powder in each one of them barrels, and
a handful of buck-shot on top of that, you've got an argument that
couldn't be upset by the Supreme Court. I'll guarantee that when you
point her anywheres within ten feet of a man not over a hundred yards
away, and let her do her duty, all the talent that that man's fambly
could employ couldn't gather enough of him to recognise him by, and you
won't be in bed more'n long enough to heal a busted shoulder.'

“'I hope it ain't going to be my painful line of performance to pull
the trigger,' says Aggy. 'I think the sight of her would have weight
with most people. When's the stage due back?'

“'Day after to-morrow, about noon.'

“'That gives us lots of time to stake, and to salt claims that can't
show cause their own selves,' says Aggy. 'I think we're all right.'

“The next day we worked like the Old Harry. We had everything fixed
up right by nightfall, and there was nothing to do but dig and wait.

“Curious folks we all are, ain't we? I should have said my own self
that if I'd found gold by the bucketful, I'd be more interested in
that, than I would be in getting even with a mut that had done me dirt,
but it wasn't so. Perhaps it was because I hadn't paid much attention
to money all my life, and I had paid the strictest attention to the way
other people used me. Living where there's so few folks accounts for
that, I suppose.

“Getting even on our esteemed friend the stage driver was right in
your Uncle Reddy's line, and Aggy and our new pard White seemed to take
kindly to it, also.

“If ever you saw three faces filled with innocent glee, it was when
we heard the wheels of that stage coming—why, the night before I was
woke up by somebody laughing. There was Aggy sound asleep, sitting up
hugging himself in the moonlight.

“We planted a sign in the middle of the road with this wording on it
in big letters, made with the black end of a stick.

NOTICE!!

THIS AND ADJOINING CLAIMS ARE THE
PROPERTY OF AGAMEMNON G. JONES,
RED SAUNDERS, JOHN HENRY WHITE,
ET AL.

TRESPASSING DONE AT YOUR OWN
RISK. OWNERS WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE
FOR THE REMAINS.

“There was a stretch of about a mile on the level before us. When
the stage come in plain sight Aggy proceeds to load up 'Old Moral
Suasion,' as he called her, so that the folks could see there was no
attempt at deception. They come pretty fairly slow after that. At fifty
yards, Ag hollers 'Halt!' The team sat right down on their tails.

“'Suppose I don't?' says the feller, trying to be smart before the
passengers.

“'It's a horrible supposition,' says Aggy, and the innocent will
have to suffer with the guilty.' Then he cocks the gun.

“'God sakes! Don't shoot!' yells one of the passengers. 'Man, you
ought to have more sense than to try and pick him out of a crowd with a
shot-gun! Get down there, you fool, and make it quick!'

“So the driver walked our way, and read. He never said a word. I
reckon he realized it was the only ford for four thousand miles, more
or less, just as Aggy had remarked. There he stood, with his mouth and
eyes wide open.

“'I'd like to have you other gentlemen come up and see our first
clean up, so you won't think we're running in a windy,' says Aggy. They
wanted to see bad, as you can imagine, and when they did see about
fifteen pound of gold in the bottom of my old hat, they talked like
people that hadn't had a Christian bringing up.

“'Oh Lord!' groans one man. 'Brigham Young and all the prophets of
the Mormon religion! This is my tenth trip over this line, and me and
Pete Hendricks played a game of seven-up right on the spot where that
gent hit her, not over a month ago, when the stage broke down! Somebody
just make a guess at the way I feel and give me one small drink.' And
he put his hand to his head. 'Say, boys!' he goes on, 'you don't want
the whole blamed creek, do you? Let us in!'

“'How's that, fellers?' says Ag to me and White. We said we was
agreeable.

“'All right, in you come!' says Aggy. 'There ain't no hog about our
firm—but as for you,' says he, walking on his tip-toes up to the
driver, 'as for you, you cock-eyed whelp, around you go! Around you
go!' he hollers, jamming the end of Moral Suasion into the driver's
trap. 'Oh, and WON'T you go 'round, though!' says he. 'Listen to me,
now: if any one of your ancestors for twenty-four generations back had
ever done anything as decent as robbing a hen-coop, it would have
conferred a kind of degree of nobility upon him. It wouldn't be
possible to find an ornerier cuss than you, if a man raked all hell
with a fine-toothed comb. Now, you stare-coated, mangey, bandy-legged,
misbegotten, out-law coyote, fly!—fly!' whoops Aggy, jumping four foot
in the air, 'before I squirt enough lead into your system to make it a
paying job to melt you down!'

“The stage driver acted according to orders. Three wide steps and he
was in the waggon, and with one screech like a p'izened bob-cat, he
fairly lifted the cayuses over the first ridge. Nobody never saw him
any more, and nobody wanted to.

“So that's the way I hit my stake, son, just as I'd always
expected—by not knowing what I was doing any part of the time—and
now, there comes my iron-horse coughing up the track! I'll write you
sure, boy, and you let old Reddy know what's going on—and on your
life, don't forget to give it to the lads straight why I sneaked off on
the quiet! I've got ten years older in the last six months. Well, here
we go quite fresh, and damned if I altogether want to, neither—too
late to argue though—by-bye, son!”

Miss Mattie sat on her little front porch, facing the setting sun.
Across the road, now ankle deep in June dust, was the wreck of the
Peters place: back-broken roof, crumbling chimneys, shutters hanging
down like broken wings, the old house had the pathetic appeal of
ship-wrecked gentility. A house without people in it, even when it is
in repair, is as forlorn as a dog who has lost his master.

Up the road were more houses of the nondescript village pattern,
made neither for comfort nor looks. God knows why they built such
houses—perhaps it was in accordance with the old Puritan idea that any
kind of physical perfection is blasphemy. Some of these were kept in
paint and window glass, but there were enough poor relations to spoil
the effect.

Down the road, between the arches of the weeping willows, came first
the brook, with the stone bridge—this broken as to coping and
threadbare in general—then on the hither side of the way some three or
four neighbour's houses, and opposite, the blacksmith's shop and
post-office, the latter, of course, in a store, where you could buy
anything from stale groceries to shingles.

In short, Fairfield was an Eastern village whose cause had departed.
A community drained of the male principle, leaving only a few queer
men, the blacksmith, and some halfling boys, to give tone to the
background of dozens of old maids.

An unsympathetic stranger would have felt that nothing was left to
the Fairfieldians but memory, and the sooner they lost that, the
better.

Take a wineglassful of raspberry vinegar, two tablespoonsful of
sugar, half a cup each of boneset and rhubarb, a good full cup of the
milk of human kindness, dilute in a gallon of water, and you have the
flavor of Fairfield. There was just enough of each ingredient to spoil
the taste of all the rest.

Miss Mattie rested her elbow on the railing, her chin in her hand,
and gazed thoughtfully about her. As a matter of fact, she was the most
inspiring thing in view. At a distance of fifty yards she was still a
tall, slender girl. Her body retained the habit, as well as the lines
of youth; a trick of gliding into unexpected, pleasing attitudes, which
would have been awkward but for the suppleness of limb to which they
testified, and the unconsciousness and ease of their irregularity.

Her face was a child's face in the ennobling sense of the word. The
record of the years written upon it seemed a masquerade—the face of a
clear-eyed girl of fourteen made up to represent her own aunt at a
fancy dress party. A face drawn a trifle fine, a little ascetic, but
balanced by the humour of the large, shapely mouth, and really
beautiful in bone and contour. The beauty of mignonette, and doves, and
gentle things.

You could see that she was thirty-five, in the blatant candor of
noon, but now, blushed with the pink of the setting sun, she was still
in the days of the fairy prince.

Miss Mattie's revery idled over the year upon year of respectable
stupidity that represented life in Fairfield, while her eyes and soul
were in the boiling gold of the sky-glory. She sighed.

A panorama of life minced before Miss Mattie's mind about as vivid
and full of red corpuscles as a Greek frieze. Her affectionate nature
was starved. They visited each other, the ladies of Fairfield—these
women who had rolled on the floor together as babies—in their best
black, or green or whatever it might be, and gloves! This, though the
summer sun might be hammering down with all his might. And then they
sat in a closed room and talked in a reserved fashion which was
entirely the property of the call. Of course, one could have a moment's
real talk by chance meeting, and there were the natural griefs of life
to break the corsets of this etiquette, although in general, the griefs
seemed to be long drawn out and conventional affairs, as if nature
herself at last yielded to the system, conquered by the invincible
conventionality and stubbornness of the ladies of Fairfield. It was the
unspoken but firm belief of each of these women, that a person of their
circle who had no more idea of respectability than to drop dead on the
public road would never go to Heaven.

Poor Miss Mattie! Small wonder she dropped her hands, sat back and
wondered, with another sigh, if it were for this she was born? She did
not rebel—there was no violence in her—but she regretted exceedingly.
In spite of her slenderness, it was a wide, mother-lap in which her
hands rested, an obvious cradle for little children. And instinctively
it would come to you as you looked at her, that there could be no more
comfortable place for a tired man to come home to, than a household
presided over by this slow-moving, gentle woman. There was nothing
old-maidish about Miss Mattie but the tale of her years. She had had
offers, such as Fairfield and vicinity could boast, and declined them
with tact, and the utmost gratitude to the suitor for the compliment;
but her “no” though mild was firm, for there lay within her a certain
quiet valiant spirit, which would rather endure the fatigue and
loneliness of old age in her little house, than to take a larger life
from any but the man who was all. A commonplace in fiction; in real
life sometimes quite a strain.

The sun distorted himself into a Rugby football, and hurried down as
though to be through with Fairfield as soon as possible. It was a most
magnificent sun-set; flaming, gorgeous, wild—beyond the management of
the women of Fairfield—and Miss Mattie stared into the heart of it
with a longing for something to happen. Then the thought came, “What
could happen?” she sighed again, and, with eyes blinded by
Heaven-shine, glanced down the village street.

She thought she saw—she rubbed her eyes and looked again—she did
see, and surely never a stranger sight was beheld on Fairfield's
street! Had a Royal Bengal tiger come slouching through the dust it
could not have been more unusual. The spectacle was a man; a very large
and mighty shouldered man, who looked about him with a bold, imperious,
keep-the-change regard. There was something in the swing of him that
suggested the Bengal tiger. He wore high-heeled boots outside of his
trousers, a flannel shirt with a yellow silk kerchief around his neck,
and on his head sat a white hat which seemed to Miss Mattie to be at
least a yard in diameter. Under the hat was a remarkable head of hair.
It hung below the man's shoulders in a silky mass of dark scarlet,
flecked with brown gold. Miss Mattie had seen red hair, but she
remembered no such color as this, nor could she recall ever having seen
hair a foot-and-a-half long on a man. That hair would have made a
fortune on the head of an actress, but Miss Mattie was ignorant of the
possibilities of the profession.

The face of the man was a fine tan, against which eyes, teeth, and
moustache came out in brisk relief. The moustache avoided the tropical
tint of the upper hair and was content with a modest brown. The owner
came right along, walking with a stiff, strong, straddling gait, like a
man not used to that way of travelling.

Miss Mattie eyed him in some fear. He would be by her house
directly, and it was hardly modest to sit aggressively on one's front
porch, while a strange man went by—particularly, such a very strange
man as this! Yet a thrill of curiosity held her for the moment, and
then it was too late, for the man stopped and asked little Eddie
Newell, who was playing placidly in the dust—all the children played
placidly in Fairfield—asked Eddie, in a voice which reached Miss
Mattie plainly, although the owner evidently made no attempt to raise
it, if he knew where Miss Mattie Saunders lived?

Eddie had not noticed the large man's approach, and nearly fell over
in a fright; but seeing, with a child's intuition, that there was no
danger in this fierce-looking person, he piped up instantly.

“Y-y-yessir!—I kin tell yer where she lives—Yessir! She lives
right down there in that little house—I kin go down with you jes'
swell 's not! Why, there she is now, on the stoop!”

“Thankee sonny,” said the big voice. “Here's for miggles,” and Miss
Mattie caught the sparkle of a coin as it flew into the grimy fists of
Eddie.

“Much obliged!” yelled Eddie and vanished up the street.

Miss Mattie sat transfixed. Her breath came in swallows and her
heart beat irregularly. Here was novelty with a vengeance! The big man
turned and fastened his eyes upon her. There was no retreat. She
noticed with some reassurance that his eyes were grave and kindly.

As he advanced Miss Mattie rose in agitation, unconsciously putting
her hand on her throat—what could it mean?

The gate was opened and the stranger strode up the cinder walk to
the porch. He stopped a whole minute and looked at her. At last.

“Well, Mattie!” he said, “don't you know me?”

A flood of the wildest hypotheses flashed through Miss Mattie's mind
without enlightening her. Who was this picturesque giant who stepped
out of the past with so familiar a salutation? Although the porch was a
foot high, and Miss Mattie a fairly tall woman, their eyes were almost
on a level, as she looked at him in wonder.

Then he laughed and showed his white teeth. “No use to bother and
worry you, Mattie,” said he, “you couldn't call it in ten years. Well,
I'm your half-uncle Fred's boy Bill—and I hope you're a quarter as
glad to see me as I am to see you.”

“What!” she cried. “Not little Willy who ran away!”

“The same little Willy,” he replied in a tone that made Miss Mattie
laugh a little, nervously, “and what I want to know is, are you glad to
see me?”

“Why, of course! But, Will—I suppose I should call you Will? I am
so flustered—not expecting you—and it's been so warm to-day. Won't
you come in and take a chair?” wound up Miss Mattie in desperation, and
fury at herself for saying things so different from what she meant to
say.

There was a twinkle in the man's eye as he replied in an injured
tone:

“Why, good Lord, Mattie! I've come two thousand miles or more to see
you, and you ask me to take a chair. Just as if I'd stepped in from
across the way! Can't you give a man a little warmer welcome than
that?”

“What shall I do?” asked poor Miss Mattie.

“Well, you might kiss me, for a start,” said he.

Miss Mattie was all abroad—still one's half-cousin, who has come
such a distance, and been received so very oddly, is entitled to
consideration. She raised her agitated face, and for the first time in
her life realised the pleasure of wearing a moustache.

Then Red Saunders, late of the Chanta Seeche Ranch, North Dakota,
sat him down.

“I'm obliged to you, Mattie,” he said in all seriousness. “To tell
you the truth, I felt in need of a little comforting—here I've come
all this distance—and, of course, I heard about father and
mother—but I couldn't believe it was true. Seemed as if they must
be waiting at the old place for me to come back, and when I saw it all
gone to ruin—Well, then I set out to find somebody, and do you know,
of all the family, there's only you and me left? That's all, Mattie,
just us two!—whilst I was growing up out West, I kind of expected
things to be standing still back here, and be just the same as I left
them—hum—Well, how are you anyhow?”

“I shouldn't guess it was the liveliest place in the world, by the
look of it,” said Red. “And as far as that's concerned, I kinder don't
know what to say myself. There's such a heap to talk about it's hard to
tell where to begin—but we've got to be friends though, Mattie—we've
just got to be friends. Good Lord! We're all there's left!
Funny, I never thought of such a thing! Well, blast it! That's enough
of such talk! I've brought you a present, Mattie.” He stretched out a
leg that reached beyond the limits of the front porch, and dove into
his trousers pocket, bringing out a buck-skin sack. He fumbled at the
knot a minute and then passed it over saying, “You untie it—your
fingers are soopler than mine,” Miss Mattie's fingers were shaking, but
the knots finally came undone, and from the sack she brought forth a
chain of rich, dull yellow lumps, fashioned into a necklace. It weighed
a pound. She spread it out and looked at it astounded. “Gracious, Will!
Is that gold?” she asked.

“That's what,” he replied. “The real article, just as it came out of
the ground: I dug it myself. That's the reason I'm here. I'd never got
money enough to go anywheres further than a horse could carry me if I
hadn't taken a fly at placer mining and hit her to beat h—er—the very
mischief.”

Miss Mattie looked first at the barbaric, splendid necklace and then
at the barbaric, splendid man. Things grew confused before her in
trying to realise that it was real. What two planets so separated in
their orbits as her world and his? She had the imagination that is
usually lacking in small communities, and the feeling of a fairy story
come true, possessed her.

“And now, Mattie,” said he, “I don't know what's manners in this
part of the country, but I'll make free enough on the cousin part of it
to tell you that I could look at some supper without flinching. I've
walked a heap to-day, and I ain't used to walking.”

Miss Mattie sprang up, herself again at the chance to offer
hospitality.

“Why, you poor man!” said she. “Of course you're starved! It must be
nearly eight o'clock! I almost forget about eating, living here alone.
You shall have supper directly. Will you come in or sit a spell
outside?”

“Reckon I'll come in,” said Red. “Don't want to lose sight of you
now that I've found you.”

It was some time since Miss Mattie had felt that anyone had cared
enough for her not to want to lose sight of her, and a delicate warm
bloom went over her cheeks. She hurried into the little kitchen.

“Mattie!” called Red.

“What is it, Will?” she answered, coming to the door.

“Can I smoke in this little house?”

“Cer—tainly! Sit right down and make yourself comfortable. Don't
you remember what a smoker father was?”

Red tried the different chairs with his hand. They were not a
stalwart lot. Finally he spied the home-made rocker in the corner.
“There's the lad for me,” he said, drawing it out. “Got to be kinder
careful how you throw two-hundred-fifty pounds around.”

“Mercy!” cried Miss Mattie, pan in hand. “Do you weigh as much as
that, Will?”

“I do,” returned Red, with much satisfaction. “And there isn't over
two pounds of it fat at that.”

“What a great man you have grown up to be, Will!”

Red took in a deep draught of tobacco and sent the vapor clear
across the little room.

“On the hay-scales, yes,” he answered, with a sort of joking
earnestness—“but otherwise, I don't know.”

The return to the old home had touched the big man deeply, and as he
leaned back in his chair there was a shade of melancholy on his face
that became it well.

Miss Mattie took in the mass of him stretched out at his ease, his
legs crossed, and the patrician cut of his face, to which the upturned
moustache gave a cavalier touch. They were good stock, the Saunders,
and the breed had not declined in the only two extant.

“He's my own cousin!” she whispered to herself, in the safety of the
kitchen. “And such a splendid looking man!” She felt a pride of
possession she had never known before. Nobody in Fairfield or vicinity
had such a cousin as that. And Miss Mattie went on joyfully fulfilling
an inherited instinct to minister to the wants of some man. She said to
herself there was some satisfaction in cooking for somebody else. But
alack-a-day, Miss Mattie's ideas of the wants of somebody else had
suffered a Fairfield change. Nothing was done on a large scale in
Fairfield. But she sat the little cakes—lucky that she had made them
yesterday—and the fried mush, and the small pitcher of milk, and the
cold ham, and the cold biscuit on the table with a pride in the
appearance of the feast.

“Supper's ready, Will,” said she.

Red responded instanter. Took a look at the board and understood. He
ate the little cakes and biscuit, and said they were the durned best he
ever tasted. He also took some pot-cheese under a misapprehension;
swallowed it, and said to himself that he had been through worse things
than that. Then, when his appetite had just begun to develop, the
inroads on the provisions warned him that it was time to stop.
Meanwhile they had ranged the fields of old times at random, and as Red
took in Miss Mattie, pink with excitement and sparkling as to eyes, he
thought, “Blast the supper! It's a square meal just to look at her. If
she ain't pretty good people, I miss my guess.”

It was a merry meal. He had such a way of telling things! Miss
Mattie hadn't laughed so much for years, and she felt that there was no
one that she had known so long and so well as Cousin Will. There was
only one jarring note. Red spoke of the vigorous celebration that had
been followed by the finding of gold. It was certainly well told, but
Miss Mattie asked in soft horror when he had finished, “You didn't
get—intoxicated—Will?”

“DID I?” said he, lost in memory, and not noticing the tone. “Well,
I put my hand down the throat of that man's town, and turned her inside
out! It was like as if Christmas and Fourth of July had happened on the
same day.”

“Oh, Will!” cried Miss Mattie, “I can't think of you like
that—rolling in the gutter.” Her voice shook and broke off. Her
knowledge of the effect of stimulants was limited to Fairfield's one
drunkard—old Tommy McKee, a disreputable old Irishman—but drunkenness
was the worst vice in her world.

“Rolling in the gutter!” cried Red, in astonishment. “Why girl! What
for would I roll in the gutter? What's the fun in that? Jiminy
Christmas! I wanted to walk on the telegraph wires—there wasn't
anything in that town high enough for me—what put gutters into your
head?”

“I—I supposed people did that when they were—like that.”

“I wouldn't waste my money on whisky, if that's all the inspiration
I got out of it,” replied Red.

“Well, of course I don't know about those things, but I wish you'd
promise me one thing.”

“Done!” cried Red. “What is it?”

“I wish you'd promise me not to touch whisky again!”

“Phew! That's a pretty big order!” He stopped and thought a minute.
“If you'll make that 'never touch it when it ain't needed,' leaving
when it's needed to what's my idea of the square thing on a promise,
I'll go you, Mattie—there's my hand.”

“Oh, I shouldn't have said anything at all, Will! I have no right.
But it seemed such a pity such a splendid man—I mean—I think—. You
mustn't promise me anything, Will,” stammered Miss Mattie, shocked at
her own daring.

“Here!” he cried, “I'm no little kid! When I promise I mean it! As
for your not having any right, ain't we all there is? You've got to be
mother and sister and aunt and everything to me. I ain't as young as I
have been, Mattie, and I miss she-ways terrible at times. Now put out
your fin like a good pardner, and here goes for no more rhinecaboos for
Chantay Seeche Red—time I quit drinking, anyhow,” he slipped a ring
off his little finger. “Here, hold out your hand,” said he, “I'll put
this on for luck, and the sake of the promise—by the same token, I've
got a noose on you now, and you're my property.”

This, of course, was only Cousin Will's joking, but Miss Mattie
noticed with a sudden hot flush, that he had chosen the engagement
finger—in all ignorance, she felt sure. The last thing she could do
would be to call his attention to the fact, or run the risk of hurting
his feelings by transferring the ring; besides, it was a pretty ring—a
rough ruby in a plain gold band—and looked very well where it was.

Then they settled down for what Red called a good medicine talk.
Miss Mattie found herself boldly speaking of little fancies and notions
that had remained in the inner shrine of her soul for years, shrinking
from the matter-of-fact eye of Fairfield; yet this big, ferocious
looking Cousin Will seemed to find them both sane and interesting, and
as her self-respect went up in the arithmetical, her admiration for
Cousin Will went up in the geometrical ratio. He frankly admitted
weaknesses and fears that the males of Fairfield would have rejected
scornfully.

Miss Mattie spoke of sleeping upstairs, because she could not rid
herself of the fear of somebody coming in.

“I know just how you feel about that,” said Red. “My hair used to be
on its feet most of the time when we were in the hay camp at the lake
beds. Gee whizz! The rattlers! We put hair ropes around—but them
rattlers liked to squirm over hair ropes for exercise. One morning I
woke up and there was a crawler on my chest. 'For God's sake, Pete!'
says I to Antelope Pete, who was rolled up next me, 'come take my
friend away!' and I didn't holler very loud, neither. Pete was chain
lightning in pants, and he grabs Mr. Rattler by the tail and snaps his
neck, but I felt lonesome in my inside till dinner time. You bet! I
know just how you feel, exactly. I didn't have a man's sized night's
rest whilst we was in that part of the country.”

It struck Miss Mattie that the cases were hardly parallel. “A
rattlesnake on your chest, Will!” she cried, with her hands clasped in
terror.

“Oh! it wasn't as bad as it sounds—he was asleep—coiled up there
to get warm—sharpish nights on the prairie in August—but darn it!
Mattie!” wrinkling up his nose in disgust, “I hate the sight of the
brutes!”

“But you wouldn't be afraid of a man, Will!”

“Well, no,” admitted he. “I've never been troubled much that way.
You see, everybody has a different fear to throw a crimp in them.
Mine's rattlesnakes and these little bugs with forty million pairs of
legs. I pass right out when I see one of them things. They give me a
feeling as if my stummick had melted.”

“Weren't the Indians terrible out there, too?” asked Miss Mattie.
“I'm sure they must have been.”

“Oh, they ain't bad people if you use 'em right,” said Red. “Not
that I like 'em any better on the ground, than in it,” he added
hastily, fearful of betraying the sentiment of his country, “but I
never had but one real argument, man to man. Black Wolf and I come
together over a matter of who owned my cayuse, and from words we backed
off and got to shooting. He raked me from knee to hip, as I was
kneeling down, doing the best I could by him, and wasting ammunition
because I was in a hurry. Still, I did bust his ankle. In the middle of
the fuss a stray shot hit the cayuse in the head and he croaked without
a remark, so there we were, a pair of fools miles from home with
nothing left to quarrel about! You could have fried an egg on a rock
that day, and it always makes you thirsty to get shot anyways serious,
thinking of which I hollered peace to old Black Wolf and told him I'd
pull straws with him to see who took my canteen down to the creek and
got some fresh water. He was agreeable and we hunched up to each other.
It ain't to my credit to say it, but I was worse hurt than that Injun,
so I worked him. He got the short straw, and had to crawl a mile
through cactus, while I sat comfortable on the cause of the
disagreement and yelled to him that he looked like a badger, and other
things that an Injun wouldn't feel was a compliment.” Red leaned back
and roared. “I can see him now putting his hands down so careful, and
turning back every once in awhile to cuss me. Turned out that it was
his cayuse, too. Feller that sold it to me had stole it from him. I
oughtn't to laugh over it, but I can't help but snicker when I think
how I did that Injun.”

Generally speaking, Miss Mattie had a lively sense of humour, but
the joke of this was lost on her. Her education had been that getting
shot was far from funny.

“Why, I should have thought you would have died, Will!”

“What! For a little crack in the leg!” cried Red, with some
impatience. “You people must quit easy in this country. Die nothin'.
One of our boys came along and took us to camp, and we was up and doing
again in no time. 'Course, Black Wolf has a game leg for good, but the
worst that's stuck to me is a yank or two of rheumatism in the rainy
season. I paid Wolf for his cayuse,” he finished shamefacedly. “I had
the laugh on him anyhow.”

Miss Mattie told him she thought that was noble of him, which
tribute Red took as medicine, and shifted the subject with speed, to
practical affairs. He asked Miss Mattie how much money she had and how
she managed to make out. Now, it was one of the canons of good manners
in Fairfield not to speak of material matters—perhaps because there
was so little material matter in the community, but Miss Mattie, doomed
to a thousand irksome petty economies, had often longed for a
sympathetic ear, to pour into it a good honest complaint of hating to
do this and that. She could not exactly go this far with Cousin Will,
but she could say that it was pretty hard to get along, and give some
details. She felt that she knew him so very well, in those few hours!
Red heard with nods of assent. He had scented the conditions at once.

“It ain't any fun, skidding on the thin ice,” said he, when they had
concluded the talk. “I've had to count the beans I put in the pot, and
it made me hate arithmetic worse than when I went over yonder to
school. Well, them days have gone by for you, Mattie.” He reached down
and pulling out a green roll, slapped it on the centre table. “Blow
that in, and limber up, and remember that there's more behind it.”

Miss Mattie's pride rose at a leap.

“Will!” she said, “I hope you don't think I've told you this to get
money from you?”

He leaned forward, put his hand on her shoulder and held her eyes
with a sudden access of sternness and authority.

“And I hope, Mattie,” said he, “that you don't think that I think
anything of the kind?”

The cousins stared into each other's eyes for a full minute. Then
Miss Mattie spoke. “No, Will,” said she, “I don't believe you do.”

“I shouldn't think I did,” retorted Red. “What in thunder would I do
with all that money? Why, good Lord, girl, I could paper your house
with ten-dollar bills—now you try to fly them green kites, like I tell
you.”

Miss Mattie broke down, the not fully realised strain of fifteen
years had made itself felt when the cord snapped. “I don't know how to
thank you. I don't know what to say. Oh, William! it seems too good to
be true.”

“What you crying about, Mattie?” said he in sore distress. “Now hold
on! Listen to me a minute! There's something I want you to do for me.”

“What is it?” she asked, drying her eyes. “For dinner to-morrow,” he
replied, “let's have a roast of beef about that size,” indicating a
wash-tub.

The diversion was complete.

“Why, Will! What would we ever do with it?” said she.

“Do with it? Why, eat it!”

“But we couldn't eat all that!”

“Then throw what's left to the cats. You ain't going to fall down on
me the first favour I ask?” with mock seriousness.

“You shall have the roast of beef. 'Pears to me that you're fond of
your stomach, Will,” said Miss Mattie, with a recovering smile.

“I have a good stomach, that's always done the right thing by me,
when I've done the right thing by it,” said Red. “And moreover,
just look at the constitution I have to support. But say, old lady,
look at that!” pointing to the clock. “Eleven-thirty; time decent
people were putting up for the night.”

The words brought to an acute stage a wandering fear which had
passed through Miss Mattie's mind at intervals during the evening.
Where was she to look for sleeping accommodations for a man? She
revolted against the convention, that, in her own mind, as well as the
rest of Fairfield, forbade the use of her house for the purpose. Long
habit of thought had made these niceties constitutional. It was almost
as difficult for Miss Mattie to say “I'll fix up your bed right there
on the sofa” as it would have been for Red to pick a man's pocket, yet,
when she thought of his instant and open generosity and what a dismal
return therefor it would be to thrust him out for reasons which she
divined would have no meaning for him, she heroically resolved to throw
custom to the winds, and speak.

But the difficulty was cut in another fashion.

“There's a little barn in the back-yard that caught my eye,” said
Red, “and if you'll lend me a blanket I'll roll it out there.”

“Sleep in the barn! You'll not do any such thing!” cried Miss
Mattie. “You'll sleep right here on the sofa, or upstairs in my bed,
just as you choose.”

“If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not. So help me Bob! I'd
smother in here. Had the darnedest time coming on that ever
was—hotels. Little white rooms with the walls coming in on you. Worse
than rattlesnakes for keeping a man awake. Reminds me of the hospital.
Horse fell on me once and smashed me up so that I had to be sent to get
puttied up again, and I never struck such a month as that since I was
born. The doc. told me I mustn't move, but I told him I'd chuck him out
of the window if he tried to stop me, and up I got. I'd have gone dead
sure if they'd held me a week more. I speak for the barn, Mattie, and I
speak real loud; that is, I mean to say I'm going to sleep in the barn,
unless there's somebody a heap larger than you on the premises. Now,
there's no use for you to talk—I'm going to do just as I say.”

“Well, I think that's just dreadful!” said Miss Mattie. “I'd like to
know what folks will think of me to hear I turned my own cousin out in
the barn.” Her voice trailed off a little at the end as the gist of
what they might say if he stayed in the house, occurred to her. “Well,”
she continued, “if you're set, I suppose I can't object.” Miss Mattie
was not a good hand at playing a part.

“I'm set,” said Red. “Get me a blanket.” As she came in with this,
he added, “Say, Mattie, could you let me have a loaf of bread? I've got
a habit of wanting something to eat in the middle of the night.”

“Certainly! Don't you want some butter with it? Here, I'll fix it
for you on a plate.”

“No, don't waste dish-washing—I'll show you how to fix it.” He cut
the loaf of bread in half, pulled out a portion of the soft part and
filled the hole with butter. “There we are, and nothing to bother with
afterwards.”

“That's a right smart notion, Will—but you'll want a knife.”

In answer he drew out a leather case from his breast pocket and
opened it. Within was knife, fork, spoon and two flat boxes for salt
and pepper. “You see I'm fixed,” said he.

“Isn't that a cute trick!” she cried admiringly. “You're ready for
most anything.”

“Sure,” said Red. “Now, good night, old lady!” He bent down in so
natural a fashion that Miss Mattie had kissed him before she knew what
she was going to do.

Down to the barn, through the soft June evening, went Red, whistling
a Mexican love song most melodiously.

Miss Mattie stood in the half-opened door and listened. Without was
balm and starlight and the spirit of flowers, breathed out in odours.
The quaint and pretty tune rose and fell, quavered, lilted along as it
listed without regard for law and order. It struck Miss Mattie to the
heart. Her girlhood, with its misty dreams of happiness, came back to
her on the wings of music.

“Isn't that a sweet tune,” she said, with a lump in her throat.

She went up into her room and sat down a moment in confusion, trying
to grasp the reality of all that had happened. In the middle of the
belief that these things were not so, came the regret of a sensitive
mind for errors committed. She remembered with a sudden sinking, that
she had not thanked him for the necklace—and the money lay even now on
the parlor table, where he had cast it! This added the physical fear of
thieves. Down she went and got the money, counted out, to her
unmitigated astonishment, five hundred dollars and thrust it beneath
her pillow with a shiver. She wished she had thought to tell him to
take care of it—but suppose the thieves were to fall on him as he
slept? Red's friends would have spent their sympathy on the thieves.
She rejoiced that the money was where it was. Then she tried to
remember what she had said throughout the evening.

“Well, I suppose I must have acted like a ninny,” she concluded.
“But isn't he just splendid!” and as Cousin Will's handsome face, with
its daring, kind eyes, came to her vision she felt comforted. “I don't
believe but what he'll make every allowance for how excited I was,”
said she. “He seems to understand those things, for all he's such a
large man. Well, it doesn't seem as if it could be true.” With a half
sigh Miss Mattie knelt and sent up her modest petition to her Maker and
got into her little white bed.

In the meantime Red's actions would have awakened suspicion. He
hunted around until he found a tin can, then lit a match and rummaged
the barn, amid terror-stricken squawks from the inhabitants, the hens.

“One, two, three, four,” he counted. “Reckon I can last out till
morning on that. Mattie, she's white people—just the nicest I ever
saw, but she ain't used to providing for a full-grown man.”

He stepped to the back of the barn and looked about him. “Nobody can
see me from here,” he said, in satisfaction. Then he scraped together a
pile of chips and sticks and built a fire, filled the tin can at the
brook, sat it on two stones over the fire, rolled himself a cigarette
and waited. A large, yellow tom-cat came out of the brush and threw his
green headlights on him, meaowing tentatively.

“Hello, pussy!” said Red. “You hungry too? Well, just wait a minute,
and we'll help that feeling—like bread, pussy?” The cat gobbled the
morsel greedily, came closer and begged for more. The tin can boiled
over. Red popped the eggs in, puffed his cigarette to a bright coal,
and looked at his watch by the light. “Gee! Ten minutes more, now!”
said he. “Hardly seems to me as if I could wait.” He pulled the watch
out several times. “What's the matter with the damn thing? I believe
it's stopped,” he growled. But at last “Time!” he shouted gleefully,
kicked the can over and gathered up its treasures in his handkerchief.

“Now, Mr. Cat, we're going to do some real eating,” said he. “Just
sit right down and make yourself at home—this is kind of fun, by
Jinks!” Down went the eggs and down went the loaf of bread in generous
slices, never forgetting a fair share for the cat.

“Woosh! I feel better!” cried Red, “and now for some sleep.” He
swung up into the hay-loft, spread the blanket on the still fragrant
old hay, and rolled himself up in a trice.

“I did a good turn when I came on here,” he mused. “If I have got
only one relation, she's a dandy—so pretty and quiet and nice. She's a
marker for all I've got, is Mattie.”

The cat came up, purring and “making bread.” He sniffed feline
fashion at Red's face.

“Foo! Shoo! Go 'way, pussy! Settle yourself down and we'll pound our
ear for another forty miles. I like you first rate when you don't walk
on my face.” He stretched and yawned enormously. “Yes sir! Mattie's all
right,” said he. “A-a-a-ll ri-” and Chantay Seeche Red was in the land
of dreams. Here, back in God's country, within twenty miles of the
place where he was born, the wanderer laid him down again, and in spite
of raid and foray, whisky and poker-cards, wear-and-tear, hard times,
and hardest test of all, sudden fortune, he was much the same
impulsive, honest, generous, devil-may-care boy who had left there
twenty-four years ago.

The next morning when Red awoke, arrows of gold were shooting
through the holes in the old barn, and outside, the bird life, the
twittering and chirping, the fluent whistle and the warble, the cackle
and the pompous crow, were in full chorus.

“Where am I at, this time?” said he, as he took in the view. “Oh, I
remember!” and his heart leapt. “I'm in my own home, by the Lord!”

He went down to the brook and washed, drying hands and face on the
silk neckerchief, which is meant for use as well as for decoration.

In the meantime, Miss Mattie had awakened, with a sense of something
delightful at hand, the meaning of which escaped her for the time. And
then she remembered, and sprang out of bed like a girl. She went to the
window, threw open the shutters and let the stirring morning air flow
in. This had been her habit for a long time. The window faced away from
the road, and no one could see who was not on Miss Mattie's own
premises.

But this morning Red had wandered around. Stopping at the rose
bushes he picked a bud.

“That has the real old-time smell,” he said, as he held it to his
nose. “Sweetbriars are good, and I don't go back on 'em, but they ain't
got the fram these fellers have.”

Bud in hand he walked beneath Miss Mattie's windows, and he was the
first thing her eye fell upon.

Her startled exclamation made him look up before she had time to
withdraw.

“Hello there!” he called joyfully. “How do you open up this day? You
look pretty well!” he added with a note of admiration. Miss Mattie had
the wavy hair which is never in better order than when left to its own
devices. Her idea of coiffure was not the most becoming that could have
been selected, as she felt that a “young” style of hair dressing was
foolish for a single woman of her years. Now, with the pretty soft hair
flying, her eyes still humid with sleep, and a touch of color in her
face from the surprise, relieved against the fleecy shawl she had
thrown about her shoulders, she was incontestably both a discreet and
pretty picture. Yet Miss Mattie could not forget the bare feet and
night-gown, although they were hidden from masculine eyes by wood and
plaster, and she was embarrassed. Still, with all the super-sensitive
fancies, Miss Mattie had a strong back-bone of New England
common-sense. She answered that she felt very well indeed, and, to
cover any awkwardness, inquired what he had in his hand.

“Good old rose,” replied Red. “Old-time smeller—better suited to
you than to me—ketch!”

At the word he tossed it, and Miss Mattie caught it dexterously. Red
had an exceedingly keen eye for some things, and he noticed the
certainty of the action. He hated fumblers. “A person can do things
right if they've got minds that work,” was one of his pet sayings.
“'Taint the muscles at all—it's in the head, and I like the kind of
head that's in use all the time.” Therefore this small affair made an
impression on him.

“Why, you could be a baseball player,” said he.

“I used to play with Joe, when I was a girl,” said Miss Mattie,
smiling. “I always liked boy's play better than I did girl's. Joe
taught me how to throw a ball, too. He said he wouldn't play with me
unless I learned not to 'scoop it,' girl fashion. I suppose you will be
wanting breakfast?” There was a hint of sarcasm in the doubt of the
inquiry.

“That's what I do!” said Red. “You must just hustle down and get
things to boiling, or I'll throw bricks through the windows. I've been
up for the last two hours.”

“Why! I don't believe it!” said Miss Mattie.

“No more do I, but it seems like it,” replied Red. “Don't you want
the fire started? Come down and open up the house.”

When Miss Mattie appeared at the door, in he strode with an armful
of wood, dropping it man-fashion, crash! on the floor.

“Skip out of the way!” said he. “I'll show you how to build a fire!”

The early morning had been the most desolate time to Miss Mattie. As
the day warmed up the feeling of loneliness vanished, perhaps to return
at evening, but not then with the same absoluteness as when she walked
about the kitchen to the echo of her own footsteps in the morning.

Now the slamming and the banging which accompanied Red's energetic
actions rang in her ears most cheerily. She even found a relish in the
smothered oath that heralded the thrust of a splinter in his finger. It
was very wicked, but it was also very much alive.

Red arose and dusted off his knees. “Now we're off!” he said as the
fire began to roar. “What's next?”

“If you'd grind the coffee, Will?” she suggested.

“Sure! Where's the hand organ?”

He put the mill between his knees, and converted the beans to
powder, to the tune of “Old dog Tray” through his nose, which Miss
Mattie found very amusing.

She measured out the coffee, one spoonful for each cup, and one for
the pot. Red watched her patiently, and when she had finished, he threw
in the rest of the contents of the mill-drawer. “I like it fairly
strong,” said he in explanation.

“Now, Will!” protested Miss Mattie. “Look at you! That will be as
bitter as boneset!”

“Thin her up with milk and she'll be all right,” replied Red.

“Well, such wasteful ways I never did see. Nobody'd think you were a
day over fifteen.”

“I'm not,” said Red stoutly, “and,” catching her chin in his hand
and turning her face up toward him—“Nobody'd put your score much
higher than that neither, if they trusted to their eyes this morning.”

The compliment hit so tender a place that Miss Mattie lacked the
resolution to tear it out, besides, it was so honest that it sounded
much less like a compliment than a plain statement of fact. She bent
hastily over the fire. “I'm glad I look young, Will,” she said softly.

“So'm I!” he assented heartily. “What's the sense in being old,
anyhow? I'm as limber and good for myself as ever I was, in spite of my
forty years.”

“You're not forty years old!” exclaimed Miss Mattie. “You're
joking!”

“Nary joke—forty round trips from flying snow to roses since I hit
land, Mattie—why, you were only a little girl when I left here—don't
you remember? You and your folks came to see us the week before I left.
I got a thrashing for taking you and Joe to the millpond, and helping
you to get good and wet. The thrashing was one of the things that gave
me a hankering for the West. Very liberal man with the hickory, father.
Spare the clothes and spoil the skin was his motto. He used to make me
strip to the waist—phee-hew! Even a light breeze rested heavy on my
back when dad got through with me—say, Mattie, perhaps I oughtn't to
say so, now that he's gone, but I don't think that's the proper way to
use a boy, do you?”

“No, I don't,” said Miss Mattie. “Your father meant well, but his
way was useless and cruel.”

“I've forgiven him the whole sweep,” said Red. “But damn me! If I
had a boy I wouldn't club the life out of him—I'd try to reason with
him first, anyhow. Makes a boy as ugly as anybody else to get the hide
whaled off his back for nothing—once in a while he needs it. Boy
that's got any life in him gets to be too much occasionally and then a
warming is healthful and nourishing. Lord! You'd think I was the father
of my country to hear me talk, wouldn't you? If somebody'd write a
book, 'What Red Saunders don't know about raising children' it would be
full of valuable information—how's that breakfast coming on?”

“All ready—sit right down, Will.”

“Go you!” cried Red, and incautiously flung himself upon one of the
kitchen chairs, which collapsed instantly and dropped him to the floor.

“Mercy on us! Are you hurt?” cried Miss Mattie, rushing forward.

“Hurt?” said Red. “Try it!—Just jump up in the air and sit on the
floor where you are now, and see if you get hurt! Oh, no! I'm not hurt,
but I'm astonished beyond measure, like the man that tickled the mule.
I'll take my breakfast right here—shouldn't wonder a bit if the floor
went back on me and landed me in the cellar—no sir! I won't get up!
Hand me the supplies, I know when I'm well off. If you want to eat
breakfast with me come sit on the floor. I'm not going to have my spine
pushed through the top of my head twice in the same day.”

“Will! You are the most ridiculous person I ever did see!” said Miss
Mattie, and she laughed till she cried in sheer light-heartedness. “But
there's a chair you can trust—come on now.”

“Well, if you'll take your solemn oath that this one has no
moustache to deceive me,” said Red doubtfully. “It looks husky—well,
I'll try it—Hooray! She didn't give an inch. This kind of reminds me
of the time Jimmy Hendricks came back from town and walked off the edge
of the bluff in the dark. It just happened that Old Scotty Ferguson's
cabin was underneath him. Jim took most of the roof off with him as he
went in. He sat awhile to figure out what was trumps, having come a
hundred and fifty feet too fast to do much thinking. Then, 'Hello!' he
yells. Old Scotty was a sleeper from 'way back, but this woke him up.

“'Hello!' says he. 'Was'er matter?'

“Jim saw he wasn't more than half awake yet, so he says, 'Why, I was
up on the bluff there, Scotty, and seeing it was such a short distance
I thought I'd drop in!'

“Jim couldn't wait for morning, and though his leg was pretty badly
sprained, he made the trip all the way round the trail and woke us up
to tell us how he'd gone through Ferguson's roof and the old man asked
him to make himself at home. Next morning there was Scotty out in front
of his cabin, his thumbs in his vest holes, looking up.

“'What's the matter, Scotty?' says I.

“'Well, I wisht you'd tell me what in the name of God went through
that roof!' says he.

“I swallered a laugh cross-ways and put on a serious face. 'Must
have been a rock,' says I.

“'Rock nothin'!' says he. 'If it had been a rock 'twould have stayed
in the cabin, wouldn't it! Well, there ain't the first blasted thing of
any shape nor description in there but the hole—you can go in and look
for yourself.'

“It cost Scotty one case of rye to make us forget those
circumstances.”

“I should have thought the man would be killed, striking on the roof
that way,” said Miss Mattie.

“Oh, no! Roof was made of quaking-asp saplings, just about strong
enough to break his fall. Scotty was the sleeper, though! It wasn't
hardly natural the way that man could pound his ear through thick and
thin. He had quite a surprising time of it once. He'd been prospecting
'round the Ruby refractory ore district and he came out at Hank
Cutter's saw-mill, just at sun-down. Hank's place was full of gold
rushers, so Old Scotty thought he'd sleep out-doors in peace and quiet.
He discovered some big boxes, that Hank was making for ore bins for the
new mill, and as the ground was kind of damp from a thunder-shower they
had that day, he spreads his blanket inside the box and goes to sleep;
ore bins have to be smooth and dust tight, so it wasn't a bad shanty.

“Well, there came a jar and waked him up. The box was rolling a
little, and going along, going along forty mile an hour. Scotty lit a
match and found he was in a kind of big tunnel but the wall was flying
by so fast, he couldn't make out just what kind of a tunnel it was.
Now, he'd gone to sleep in peace and quiet on a side hill, and to wake
up and find himself boat-riding in a tunnel was enough to surprise
anybody. First he pinched himself to see if it was Hank's pie, or a
cold fact, found it was a fact, then he lit another match and leaned
over and looked at the black water underneath, but this made the box
tip so it scart him and he settled down in the bottom again. He didn't
try to think—what was the use? No man living could have figured things
out with the few facts Scotty had before him. All of a sudden the box
made a rush and shot out into the air, and Scotty felt they were
falling. 'God sakes!' he says to himself. 'What's next, I wonder?' Then
they hit the water below with a ker-flap that nearly telescoped Scotty
and sent the spray flying. After that they went along smooth again.
'Well,' says Scotty, 'I don't know where I am, nor who I am, nor what's
happened, nor who's it, nor nothing about this game. So far I ain't
been hurt, though, and I might just as well lie down and get a little
more rest.'

“It was broad daylight when he woke up again, and a man was looking
into the box. 'Hello, pardner!' he says. 'I hope you've had a pleasant
journey—do you always travel this way?'

“Scotty raised up and found his craft was aground—high and dry—no
water within a hundred feet of it. On one side was quite a little town.

“'Say,' says he, 'could I trouble you to tell me where I am,
friend?'

“'You're at Placerville,' answers the other.

“'Placerville!' yells Scotty, 'and I went to sleep at Cutter's Mill,
sixty-five miles from here!—what are you giving us, man?'

“'I'm putting it to you straight,' says the stranger. 'Take a look
around you.'

“Scotty looked and there was all kinds of wreckage, from a dead beef
critter to a wheel barrow.

“'What in nation's all this?' says he.

“'Washout,' says the man. 'Cloud burst up on the divide—worst we've
ever had—your box is about high water mark—you see there was water
enough for awhile—I reckon you're about the only thing that came
through alive.'

“'Well, wouldn't that knock you?' says Scotty.

—“Whilst the rest of the folk at the mill was taking to the high
ground for their lives, with the water roaring and tearing through the
gulch, Scotty had peacefully gone off in his little boat, down the
creek, and instead of going over the rapids, where he'd have been done,
for all his luck, the box ambles through the flume they was building
for the new mill. Of course there was the jounce over the tail race,
but that hadn't hurt him much, and after, he rocked in the cradle of
the deep, until he got beached at Placerville.

“'Come along, friend,' says Scotty to the feller, 'you and me are
going to have a little drink on this, if it is the last act.' And I
reckon probably they made it two, for when Scotty got back again he was
in a condition that made everybody believe that he'd only guessed at
the story he told. But they found out afterward it was a solemn fact.
Mattie, give us some more coffee.”

Thus abruptly recalled to Fairfield, Miss Mattie started up.

“Well, Will, it does seem as if that was a dangerous country to live
in,” said she.

“Oh, not so awful!” said Red. “Just as many people die here as they
do there—this world's a dangerous place to live in, wherever you
strike it, Mattie.”

“That's so,” said she, thoughtfully.

“And now,” said Red, pushing back his chair, “it's time I got to
work and left you to do the housework undisturbed.”

“What are you going to do, Will?”

“First place, there's fences and things to be tinkered up, I see. I
suppose a millionaire like me ought to hire those things done, but I'd
have measles of the mind if I sat around doing nothing.”

“I have been wanting to get the place in good order for some time,”
said Miss Mattie, “but what with the money I had to spend for this and
that, and not being able to get Mr. Joyce to come in for a day's work
when I wanted him, it's gone on, until there is a good deal of wrack to
it.”

“We'll wrack it t'other way round in no time—got any tools here?”

“Out in the barn is what's left of father's tools—people have
borrowed 'em and forgot to return 'em, and they've rusted or been lost
until I'm afraid there ain't many of 'em left.”

“Well, I'll get along to-day somehow, and later on we'll stock
up—want any help around the house?”

“Thank you, no, Will.”

“Then I'm off.”

It was almost with a feeling of terror that Miss Mattie beheld him
root up the fence. Her idea of repairing was to put in a picket here
and there where it was most needed; Red's was to knock it all flat
first, and set it up in A1 condition afterward. So, in two hours' time
he straightened up and snapped the sweat from his brow, beholding the
slain pickets prone on the grass with thorough satisfaction. Yet he
felt tired, for the day was already hot with a moist and soaking
sea-coast heat, to which the plainsman was unaccustomed. A
three-quarter-grown boy passed by, lounging on the seat of a farm
waggon.

“Hey!” hailed Red. The boy stopped and turned slowly around.

“Yes, sir,” he answered courteously enough.

“Want a job?” said Red.

“Well, I dunno,” replied the boy. He was much astonished at the
appearance of his interrogator, and he was a cautious New England boy
to boot.

“You don't know?” retorted Red. “Well,” with some sarcasm,
“d'ye suppose I could find out at the post-office?”

The boy looked at Red with a twinkle in his eye, and a comical
drawing of his long mouth.

“I calc'late if you cud fin' out anyweres, 'twould be there,” said
he.

Red laughed. He had noticed the busy post-mistress rushing out of
her store to waylay anyone likely to have information on any subject, a
stream of questions proceeding from her through the door.

“Say, you got anything particular to do?”

“No, sir—leastways th'ain't no hurry about it.”

“Can I buy stuff to make a fence with, around here?”

“Yes, sir—Mister Pettigrew's got all kinds of buildin' material at
his store—two mile over yonder,” pointing with the whip.

“You drive over there for me, and get some—just like this
here—pickets and posts and whatever you call them long pieces, and
I'll make it right with you.”

“Yes, sir—how much will I get?”

“Oh, tell him to fill the waggon up with it, and I'll send back what
I don't want—hustle, now, like a good boy; I want to get shut of this
job; I liked it better before I begun.”

When his Mercury had speeded on the journey at a faster gait than
Red would have given him credit for, the architect strode down to the
blacksmith's shop. There was a larger crowd than usual around the
forge, as the advent of the stranger had gotten into the wind, and the
village Vulcan was a person who not only looked the whole world in the
face, but no one of the maiden ladies of Fairfield could have excelled
his interest in looking the whole world as much in the inside pocket as
possible. The blacksmith was emphatically a gossip, as well as a
hardworking, God-fearing man.

“Say, there he comes now, Mr. Tuttle!” cried one of the loungers,
and nudged the smith to look.

“Well, let him come!” retorted the smith, testily, jamming a shoe in
the fire with unnecessary force; as a matter of fact, he was
embarrassed. The loungers huddled together for moral support, as the
big cow-man loomed through the doorway.

“For the sake of good fellowship, I'll say 'yes' to that,” responded
Red. “But if you want my honest opinion on the subject, it's damn hot.”

“'Tis that,” assented the smith, and a silence followed.

“Say, who's your crack fence-builder around here?” asked Red. “The
man that can make two pickets grow where only one grew before and do it
so easy that it's a pleasure to sit and look at him?”

“Hey?” inquired the smith, not precisely getting the meaning of the
address.

“Why, I've got a fence to build,” exclaimed Red. “And now I want
some help—want it so bad, I'll produce to the extent of three a day
and call it a day from now 'till six o'clock—any takers here? Make
your bets while the little ball rolls.”

The loungers understood the general drift of this and pricked up
their ears, as did the blacksmith. “Guess one of the boys will help
you,” said the latter.

“Well, who's it?” asked Red, glancing at the circle of faces. Three
dollars a day was enormous wages in that part of the country. Nobody
knew just what to say.

“Oh, well!” cried Red, “let's everybody run—I reckon I can find
something to do for the five of you—are you with me?”

“Yes, sir,” they said promptly.

“Can I borrow a hammer or so off you, old man?” questioned Red of
the smith.

“Certainly, sir,” returned the latter heartily. “Take what you
want.”

“Much obliged—and the gate hinges are out of whack—Miss Saunders'
place, you know—come over and take a squint at 'em in the near
by-and-by, will you? May as well fix it up all at once—come on, boys!”

It was thus that the greatest enterprise that Fairfield had seen in
many a day was undertaken. Miss Mattie was simply astounded as the army
bore down upon the house.

“Whatever in the world is Cousin Will doing?” said she; but resting
strong in the faith that it was necessarily all right, she was content
to wait for dinner and an explanation. Not so the post-mistress. The
agonies of unrequited curiosity the worthy woman suffered that morning
until she at last summoned up her resolution and asked the smith plump
out and out what it all meant, would have to be experienced to be
appreciated. And the smith kept her hanging for a while, too, saying to
himself in justification, that it wasn't right the way that old gal had
to get into everybody's business. The smith was like some of the rest
of us; he could see through a beam if it was in his own eye.

There was a great din of whacking and hammering that morning. Red
worked like a horse, now that he had company. A sudden thought struck
him and he went into the house.

“Mattie,” said he.

“Well, Will?”

“I see a use for the rest of that nice big roast of beef I smell in
the oven—let's have all these fellers stay to dinner, and give 'em one
good feed—what do you say?”

“Why, I'd like to. Will—but I don't know—where'll I set them?”

“Couple of boards outside for a table—let them sit on boxes or
something—got plates and things enough?”

“My, yes! Plenty of such things, Will.”

“Then if it ain't too much trouble for you, we'll let it go.”

“No trouble at all, Will—it will be a regular picnic.”

“Boys, you'll eat with me this day,” said Red.

They spread the board table beneath an old apple tree, and cleaned
up for the repast in the kitchen storm-shed with an apologetic, “Sorry
to trouble you, Miss Saunders,” or such a matter as each went in.

Just as Miss Mattie was withdrawing the meat from the oven, there
came a knock at the door.

“Goodness, gracious!” she exclaimed. “Who can that be now? Will,
will you see who that is? I can't go.”

“Sure!” said Red, and went to the door. There stood two women of
that indefinite period between forty and sixty, very decently dressed
and with some agitation visible in the way they fussily adjusted
various parts of their attire.

They started at the sudden spectacle of the huge man who said
pleasantly, “Howderdo, ladies!”

“Why, how do you do?” replied the taller instantly, and in a voice
she had never heard before. “I hope you're well, sir?” A remark which
filled her with surprise.

“Thanks—I'm able to assume the perpendicular, as you can see,”
responded Red with a handsome smile of welcome. “How do you find
yourself?”

“I'm pretty well,” said the flustered lady. “How do you do?”

“Durned if we ain't right back where we started from,” mourned Red
to himself. “If it's one of the customs of this country saying
'howderdo' an hour at a stretch, I pass it up.” Aloud, he said, “Coming
along fine—how's your father?” “Cuss me if I don't shift the cut a
little, anyhow,” he added mentally.

“Why, he's very well indeed!” exclaimed the lady with fervor.
“How—” She got no further on the query, for the other woman
interrupted in a tone of scandal. “Mary Ann Demilt! How can you talk
like that! Your father's been dead this five year last August!”

The horror of the moment was broken by the appearance of Miss
Mattie, crying hospitably on seeing the visitors, “Why, Mary and
Pauline! How do you do?”

The shorter one—Pauline—looked up and said sharply, “We're well
enough, Mattie.” She was weary of the form.

“Come right in,” said Miss Mattie. “You're just in time for dinner.”

There was a great protest at this. They “hadn't a moment to spare,”
they were “just going down to the corner, and had stopped to say,”
etc., etc.

“You've got to help me,” said Miss Mattie. “Will here has invited
the boys who are working for him to stay to dinner, and it won't be any
more than Christian for you to help me out.”

“Ladies!” said Red. “If you don't want to starve a man who's
deserving of a better fate, take off your fixings and come out to
dinner. No,” he continued to their protests, which he observed were
growing weaker. “It's no trouble at all: there's plenty for
everybody—come one, come all, this house shall fly, clean off its base
as soon as I—Now for Heaven's sake, ladies, it's all settled—come
on.”

Whereat they laughed nervously, and took off their hats.

It was a jolly dinner party. The young fellows Red had picked up in
the blacksmith's shop were not the ordinary quality of loungers. They
were boys of good country parentage, with a common school education,
who, unfortunately, could find nothing to do but the occasional odd
job. Of course it would not take long to transform them into common
n'er-do-wells, but now they were merely thoughtless boys.

The whole affair had an al fresco flavor which stoppered
convention. The two women visitors pitched in and had as good a time as
anybody.

In the middle of the festivities a young man walked past the front
fence; a stranger evidently, for-his clothes wore the cut of a city,
and a cosmopolitan, up-to-date city at that. He stopped and looked at
the house, hesitated a moment and then walked in, back to where the
folk were eating.

“Excuse me,” said he, as they looked up at him, “but isn't this Mr.
Demilt's house?”

A momentary silence followed, as it was not clear whose turn it was
to answer. Miss Mattie glanced around and finding Red's eye on her,
replied, “No sir—Mr. Demilt's house is about a mile further up the
road.”

“Dear me!” said the young man ruefully. He was a spic-and-span,
intelligent looking man, with less of the dandy about him than the air
of a man who had never worn anything but clothes of the proper trim,
and become quite used to it. Nevertheless the sweat stood out in drops
on his forehead, for Fairfield's front “street” savoured of a less
moral region than it really was, on a broiling summer day.

The young man sighed frankly and wiped his head. “Well, that's too
bad,” he said. “I'm a stranger here—would you kindly tell me where I
could get some dinner?”

“What's the matter with that?” inquired Red, pointing to the roast,
which still preserved an air of fallen greatness. He had liked the look
of the other instantly.

The stranger looked first at Red and then at the roast. “The only
thing I can see the matter with that,” he answered, “is that it is a
slice too thick.”

“Keno!” cried Red, “you get it. Mattie, another plate and weapons to
fit. Sit down, sir, and rest your fevered feet. It you don't like
walking any better than I do, you've probably strewn fragments of one
of the commandments all the way from where the stage dropped you to
this apple tree.”

“It seems to me that I did make some remarks that I never learned at
my mother's knee,” returned the other laughing. “And I'm exceedingly
obliged for the invitation, as there doesn't seem to be a hotel here,
and I am but a degree south of starvation.”

“Red or black?” asked the host, with a quick glance at his guest.

The other caught the allusion. “I haven't followed the deal,” he
replied, “but I'll chance it on the red.”

Somehow he felt instantly at home and at ease; it was a quality that
Red Saunders dispersed wherever he went.

“There you are, sir,” said Red, forwarding a plate full of juicy
meat. “The ladies will supply the decorations.”

“Do you like rice as a vegetable, sir?” inquired Miss Mattie.

“No—he doesn't,” interrupted Red. “He likes it as an animal—never
saw anyone who looked less like a vegetable than our friend,” The young
man's laugh rang out above the others.

Poor Miss Mattie was confused. “It's too bad of you, Will, to put
such a meaning on my words,” she said.

“The strange part of it is,” spoke the young man, seeing an
opportunity for a joke, and to deal courteously with his entertainers
at the same time. “The peculiar fact is, that my name is Lettis.”

“Lettuce?” cried Red. “Mattie, I apologise—he is a vegetable.”

At which they all laughed again.

“And now,” said Red, “I'm Red Saunders, late of the Chantay Seeche
Ranch, Territory of Dakota—State of North Dakota, I mean, can't get
used to the State business; there's a Bill and a Dick on this side of
me and two Johns and a Sammy on the other. Foot of the table is Miss
Mattie Saunders, next to her—just as they run—Miss Pauline Doolittle
and Miss Mary Ann Demilt, who may be kin to the gentleman you're
seeking.”

“Mr. Thomas F. Demilt?” asked the stranger.

“He's my sister,” responded Miss Mary Ann. Whereat the youths buried
their faces in the plates, as Mr. Thomas F., in spite of many excellent
qualities, bore a pathetic resemblance to the title.

“I mean,” continued the lady hurriedly, “that I'm his brother.”

“By Jimmy, ma'am!” exclaimed Red. “But yours is a strange family!”

“What Miss Demilt wishes to say,” cut in Miss Doolittle with some
asperity, “is that Mr. Thomas Faulkenstone Demilt is her brother.” She
did not add, as extreme candour would have urged, “And I have some
hope—remote, alas! but there—of becoming sister to Miss Demilt
myself.”

“Thank you!” said Lettis. “Shall I be able to see him this
afternoon?”

“Oh, mercy, yes!” said Miss Mary Ann. “Tom is home all day.”

“I can thank the kind fates for that,” said Lettis. “I had begun to
think he was a myth,” and he fell in upon the tender meat with the
vigorous appetite of youth and a good digestion.

Nathaniel Lettis was by no means a fool, and he had experience in
business, but the mainspring of the young fellow was frankness, and in
the course of the dinner he told his errand. Mr. Demilt had written to
his firm explaining the advantages of starting a straw-board factory in
Fairfield. It was too small a thing for the firm to be interested in,
but Lettis had a small capital which he wished to invest in an
enterprise of his own handling, and it had struck him that there might
be a chance for independence; therefore he had come to find out the lay
of the land.

* * * * *

Red Saunders' first-glance liking of the stranger deepened as he
told of his business. The cowman did not blame people who took devious
ways and dealt in ambiguities, for his experience in the world, which
was pretty fairly complete, had told him that craft was a necessity for
weak natures; nevertheless he cared not for those who used it.

In his part of the West, a man would no more think of giving a false
impression of his financial standing to alter his position in one's
regard, than he would wear corsets. Money was of small consequence; its
sequelae of less. Men spoke openly of how much they made; how they
liked the job; how their claims were paying; such matters were neutral
ground of chance conversation, as the weather is in the East. The rapid
and unpredictable changes of fortune gave a tendency to make light of
one's present condition. A man would say “I'm busted” without any more
feeling than he would say “I have a cold.” Now, in Fairfield, that is
not likely lonesome in that respect, one of the principal objects in
life was to conceal the poverty which would persist in sticking its
gaunt elbows through the cloth of words spread over it. Red asked
straight-forward questions—shrewd ones, too—seeing that the other was
one of his own kind and would not resent it.

Lettis wanted nothing better than a chance to expand on the subject.
It was close to his heart. He had been a subordinate about as long as a
proud and masterful young fellow ought to be. Now he was quivering to
try his own strength, and seeing, for his part, that his host was
inspired with a genuine interest and not curiosity, he gave him all the
information in his power.

“But a plant like that is going to cost some money, ain't it?” asked
Red.

“Too much for me, I'm afraid,” replied Lettis. “I have five thousand
to put in, and I suppose I could borrow the rest, but that's saddling
the business with too heavy charges right in the beginning. Still, it
may not be as bad as I fancy.”

Red drummed on the table, thinking. “I wouldn't mind getting into a
business of some kind, as long as it was making things,” he said. “I
don't hanker to keep store much—suppose I go along with you, when you
look up how much straw is raised and the rest of it?”

“Would you?” cried the young fellow, eagerly. “By George, sir, I
wish you could see your way clear to take hold of it. Could you stand
ten thousand, for instance? Excuse the question, but I'm so anxious
over this——”

“Lord! What's the harm of asking facts?” said Red. Then with a gleam
of genial pride, “Ten thousand wouldn't break me by a durn sight”.

Lettis' boyish face fairly glowed. “It was my good angel made me
stop in front of your fence,” he said. “I saw you all eating in here
and you looked so jolly, that I thought I'd stop, on the chance you
might be the man I was looking for; now I'll go right on and see Mr.
Demilt and find out what he wants to do in the matter.”

“Wait for the waggon and you can ride,” said Red. “Boy's gone home
to see his dad about working for me this afternoon; in the meantime, it
you're not too proud to take hold and help us with this dod-ratted
fence, I'll be obliged to you.”

“Bring on your fence! I'm ready,” said Lettis.

“Come on, boys!” said Red, and the party rose from the table. Later
the waggon came up.

“Well, good day, Lettis,” said Red. “If you can't get quarters
anywhere else, come on and help me hold the barn down.”

“Do you sleep in the barn? Then I'll come back sure. Tell you how it
is, Mr. Saunders. I've been stuck up in a three-by-nine office for four
years—nose held to 'A to M, Western branch,' and if I'm not sick of it
there's no such thing as sickness; to get out and breathe the fresh
air, to see the country, to be my own master! Well, sir, it just makes
me tremble to think of it. I hope you find the straw-board what you
want to take up.”

“I shouldn't wonder if it would be,” answered Red. “We'll make a
corking team to do business, Lettis, I can see that—so cautious and
full of tricks, and all that.”

The young man laughed and then sobered down. “Of course, I know the
whole thing would look insane to most people,” he said sturdily, “but
I've been in business long enough to see sharp gentlemen come to grief
in spite of their funny work. I don't believe a man'll come to any more
harm by believing people mean well by him than he would by working on
the other tack.”

“Good boy!” said Red, slapping him on the back. “You stick to that
and you'll get a satisfaction out of it that money couldn't buy you.
Another thing, you'd never get a cent out of me in this world it you
were one of these smooth young men. My eye teeth are cut, son, for all
I may seem easy. The man that does me a trick has a chance for bad
luck, and you can bet on that.”

“Lord! I believe you!” replied Lettis, taking in the dimensions of
his new friend. “Well, good-bye for the present, Mr. Saunders—thank
you for the dinner and still more for the heart you have put into me.”

At six o'clock the fence was not quite finished.

“If you'll stay with me until the thing's done, I'll stand another
dollar all around,” said Red. “I don't want it to stare me in the face
to-morrow.”

The eldest spoke up. “We'll stay with you, Mr. Saunders, but we
don't want any money for it, do we, fellers?”

“No,” they replied in chorus, well meaning what they said.

“Why, you're perfectly welcome to the cash!” said Red.

“And you're welcome to the work,” retorted the boy. “We're paid
plenty as it is.”

“If that's the way you look at it, I'm much obliged to you,” said
Red, who would not have discouraged such a feeling for anything. He
said to himself, “This don't seem much like the kind of people I've
heard inhabited these parts. Those boys are all right. Reckon it you
use people decent they'll play up to your lead, no matter what country
it is.”

At seven thirty the fence was done, gorgeous in a coat of fresh red
paint, and the hands departed, each with a slice of Miss Mattie's
chocolate cake, a thing to make the heathen gods feel contemptuous of
ambrosia.

They went straight to the blacksmith's shop, where they were
anxiously expected.

“Good Lord!” he said a little later, “it you fellers will talk one
at a time, p'r'aps I can make out what's happened. Now, Sammy, sp'ose
you do the speaking?”

Whereupon Sammy faithfully chronicled the events of the day. The
boys had behaved themselves as if there was nothing out of the common
happening while they were with Red, being held up by a sense of pride,
but naturally, the splendid physique of the cowman, his picturesque
attire, his abandoned way of scattering money around and the air of a
frolic he had managed to impart to a day's hard work, all had effect on
imagination, and the boys were very much excited.

“I'd like to know how many Injuns that feller's killed!” piped up
the youngest. “My! he could grab hold of a man and wring his neck like
a chicken.”

“Aw, tst!” remonstrated the blacksmith. But the elders stood by the
younker this time.

“Yes, he could, Mr. Farrel!” said they. “You ought to seen him when
he rolled up his sleeves! He's got an arm on him like the hind leg of a
horse, and he uses an ax like a tack-hammer. He got mad once when he
pounded his thumb, and busted the post square in two with one crack.”

“Well, he looks like a husky man,” admitted the blacksmith. “But why
didn't you boys take the extry dollar when he made the offer? He 'pears
to know what he was about and looks kind of foolish to say 'no' to it.”

There was a moment's silence. “We wanted to show him we were just as
good as the folks he knew,” explained the eldest, somewhat
shame-facedly.

The blacksmith straightened himself. “Quite right, too,” said he.
“We air, when you come to that.” A little pride is a wonderful
tonic. Each unit of that gathering felt himself the better for the
display of it.

* * * * *

In the meantime, Red was repairing the ravages of the day opposite
Miss Mattie at a supper table which was bountifully spread. Miss Mattie
put two and two together, and found they meant a larger sum of eatables
than she had hitherto felt sufficient, and with a little pang at the
thought of the inadequacy of her first offering to her cousin, provided
such fatness as the land of Fairfield boasted.

They discussed the events of the day with satisfaction.

“My!” said Miss Mattie. “You do things wholesale while you are about
it, Will, don't you?”

Red smiled in pleased acknowledgment. “I'm no peanut stand, old
lady,” said he. “I like to see things move.”

Then Miss Mattie broached the question she had been hovering around
ever since her guests had taken their leave.

“Do you think you'll really go into business with that young man who
was here to dinner?” she asked.

“Why, I think it's kinder likely,” said Red.

“But you don't know anything about him, Will,” she continued,
putting the weak side of her desire forward, in order to rest more
securely if that stood the test.

“No, I don't,” agreed Red. “But here's the way I feel about that: I
want to be doing something according to my size; besides that, it would
be a good thing for this place if some kind of a live doings was to
start here. All right, that's my side of it. Now, as far as not knowing
that young feller's concerned, I might think I knew him from
cyclone-cellar to roof-tree, and he might do me to a crowded house. My
idea is that life's a good deal like faro—you know how that is.”

“I remember about his not letting the people go, but I'm afraid I
don't know my Bible as well as I ought to, Will,” apologised Miss
Mattie, rather astonished at his allusion.

“Let the people go? Bible?” cried Red, laying down his knife and
fork, still more astonished at her allusion. “Will you kindly tell me
what that has to do with faro-bank? Girl, one of us is full of ghost
songs, and far, far off the reservation. What in the name of Brigham
Young's off-ox are you talking about?”

“Why, you spoke of Pharaoh, Will, and I can remember about his
holding the children of Israel captive, and the plagues, but I really
don't see just how it applies.”

“Oh!” said Red, as a great light broke upon him. “Oh, I see what
you're thinking about. The old boy who corralled the Jews, and made 'em
work for the first and last time in their history, and they filled him
full of fleas, and darkness, and all kinds of unpleasant experiences to
break even? Well, I was not talking about him at all. My faro is a game
played with a lay-out and a pack of cards and a little tin box that you
ought to look at carefully before you put any money on the board, to
see that it ain't arranged for dealing seconds; and there's a lookout
and a case keeper and—well, I don't believe I could tell you just how
it works, but some day I'll make a layout and we'll have some fun. It's
a bully game, but I say, it's a great deal like life—the splits go to
the dealer; that is to say, that if the king comes out to win and lose
at the same time, you lose anyhow, see?”

“No,” said Miss Mattie, truthfully.

Red thrust his fingers through his hair and sighed. “I'm afraid I
know too much about it to explain it clearly,” he replied. “But what I
mean is this: some people try to play system at faro, and they last
about as quick as those that don't. I always put the limit on the card
that's handiest, and the game don't owe me a cent; as a matter of fact,
some of the tin-horns used to wear a pained expression when they saw me
coming across the room. I've split 'cm from stem to keelson more than
once, and never used a copper in my life—played 'em wide open, all the
time. Now,” and he brought his fist down on the table, “I'm going to
play that young man wide open, and I'll bet you I don't lose by him
neither. He looks as honest as a mastiff pup, for all he dresses kind
of nice. I might just as well try him on the fly, as to go lunk-heading
around and get stuck anyhow, with the unsatisfactory addition of
feeling that I was a fool, as well as confiding.”

Most of the argument had been ancient Aryan to Miss Mattie, but the
ring of the voice and the little she understood made the tenor plain. A
sudden moisture gathered in her eyes as she said, “You're too good and
honest and generous a man to distrust anybody: that's what I think,
Will.”

“Mattie, I wish you wouldn't talk like that,” said he, in an injured
voice. “It ain't hardly respectable.”

After which there was a silence for a short time. Then said Miss
Mattie, “Do you think you could content yourself here, Will, after all
the things you've seen?”

Red brightened at the change of topic. “I'll tell you how that is:
if I hadn't any capital, and had to work here as a poor man, I don't
believe I'd take the trouble to try and live—I'd smother; but having
that pleasant little crop of long greens securely planted in the bank
where the wild time doesn't grow, and thusly being able to cavort
around as it sweetly pleases me, why, I like the country. It's sport to
take hold of a place like this, that's only held together by its
suspenders, and try to make a real live man's town out of it.”

Miss Mattie drew a deep breath of relief. “You came like the hero in
a fairy story, Will, and I was afraid you'd go away like one,” she
said.

He reached across the table and patted her hand. “You'd have had to
gone, too,” said he. “The family'll stick together.”

She thanked him in a soft little voice. “Dear me!” she murmured. “It
does seem that you've been here a year, Will.”

“Never was told that I was such slow company before.”

“You know perfectly well that that isn't what I mean.”

“Well, you'll have to put up with me for a while, whatever I am;
insomuch as I'm to be a manufacturer and the Lord knows what. Then some
day I'm going to have an awful hankering for the land where the breeze
blows, and then we'll take a shute for open prairie. It's cruelty to
animals for me to straddle a horse now, yet there's where I'm at home,
and I'm going to buy me a cayuse of some kind—say, I ought to get at
that; if I'm going around with Lettis I want to ride a horse—know
anybody that's got a real live horse for sale, Mattie? No? Well, I'll
stop in and see the lady that deals the mail—I'll bet you what that
woman doesn't know about what's going on in this camp will never get
into history—be back right away.”

Said he to the post-mistress, “My name's Saunders, ma'am—cousin to
Miss Mattie. I just stopped in to find out if you knew anyone that had
a riding horse for sale; horse with four good legs that'll carry me all
day, and about the rest I don't care a frolicsome cuss.”

The post-mistress replied at such length, and with such velocity
that Red was amazed. He gathered from her remarks that a certain Mr.
Upton had an animal, purchased of a chance horse dealer, which it was
altogether likely he would dispose of, as the first time he had tried
the brute it went up into the air all sorts of ways, and caused the
owner to perform such tricks before high Heaven as made the angels
weep.

“Where does this man live?” asked Red, with a kindling eye.

“He lives about three miles out on the Peterville road, but he's in
town to-night visitin' Miss Alders—Johnny!” to a small boy who had
been following the conversation, his wide-open eyes bent on Red, and
his mouth and wiggling bare toes expressing their delight in vigorous
contortions, “Johnny, you run tell Mr. Upton there's a gentleman in
here wants to see him about buying a horse.”

“Don't disturb him if he's visiting,” remonstrated Red.

“He won't call that disturbing him,” replied the post-mistress, with
a shrill laugh. “He'll be here in no time.”

She was a true prophet. It seemed as if the boy had barely left the
store when he returned with a stoop-shouldered, solemn-faced man, who
had a brush-heap of chin-whisker decorating the lower part of his face.
After greetings and the explanation of the errand, Mr. Upton stroked
his chin-whisker regretfully. “Young man,” said he, “I'm in a pecooliar
and onpleasant position; there's mighty feyew things I wouldn't do in a
hawse trade, but I draw the line on murder. That there hawse'll kill
you, just's sure as you're fool enough to put yerself on his back. I'll
sell you a real hawse mighty reasonable—”

“I'll risk him,” cut in Red. “Could you lead him down here in the
morning?”

“Yes, indeedy—he's a perfect lady of a horse to lead—-you can pick
up airy foot—climb all over him in fac', s'long's you don't try to
ride him or hitch him up. If you do that—well, young man, you'll get a
pretty fair idee of what is meant by one of the demons of hell.”

“What kind of saddle have you got?”

“One of them outlandish Western affairs that the scamp threw in with
the animal—you see, I thought I'd take up horse-back riding for my
health; I was in bed three weeks after my fust try.”

“I'll go you seventy-five dollars for the outfit, just as you got
it—chaps, taps, and latigo straps, if you'll have it in front of my
house at nine o'clock to-morrow.”

“All right, young man—all right sir—now don't blame me if you air
took home shoes fust.”

“What have you been doing now, Will?” asked Miss Mattie with
prescience.

“Only buying a horse, Mattie,” returned Red soberly. “Seems to be
quite an event here.”

“Is that all?”

“That's all, so help me Bob!” Red had a suspicion that there would
be objections if she knew what kind of a horse it was.

Lettis, who had roomed with Red overnight, was in the secret.

The horse arrived, leading very quietly, as Mr. Upton had said. It
was a buckskin, fat and hearty from long resting. Nothing could be more
docile than the pensive lower lip, and the meek curve of the neck;
nothing could be more contradictory than the light of its eye; a
brooding, baleful fire, quietly biding its time.

“Scatter, friends!” cried Red, as he put his foot in the stirrup.
“Don't be too proud to take to timber!”

He swung over as lightly as a trapeze performer, deftly catching his
other stirrup. The horse groaned and shivered.

Red threw the bridle over the horn of the saddle. “Go it, you
devil!” cried he. And they went. Six feet straight in the air, first
pass. The crowd scattered, as requested. They hurried at that. Red gave
the brute the benefit of his two hundred and a half as they touched
earth, and his opponent grunted when he felt the jar of it. They
rocketted and ricochetted; they were here, they were there, they were
everywhere, the buckskin squealing like a pig, and fighting with every
ounce of the strength that lay in his steel strung legs; the dust rose
in clouds; Red's hat flew in no time; he was yelling like a maniac, and
the crowd was yelling like more maniacs. Now and then a glimpse of the
rider's face could be caught, transported with joy of the struggle;
then the dust would roll up and hide everything. No one was more
pleased at the spectacle than the blacksmith. He was capering in the
middle of the road, waving a hand-hammer and shouting “Hold him down! Hold him DOWN! Why do you let him jump up like that? If I was
on that horse I'd show you! Aw, there it is again—Stop him! Stop
him!”

At this point the buckskin made three enormous leaps for the
blacksmith, as though he had understood. The smith cast dignity to the
winds and went over the nearest fence in the style that little boys,
when coasting, call “stomach-whopper”—or words to that effect—and
took his next breath two minutes later. He might have saved the labour,
as the horse wheeled on one foot, and pulled fairly for the picket
fence opposite. Red regretted the absence of herders as the sharp
pickets loomed near. It was no time for regrets. The horse was over
with but little damage—a slight scratch, enough to rouse his temper,
however, for he whaled away with both hind feet, and parts of the fence
landed a hundred feet off. Then a dash through an ancient grape arbor,
and they were lost to view of the road. Some reckless small boys
scampered after, but the majority preferred to trace the progress of
the conflict by the aboriginal “Yerwhoops” that came from somewhere in
behind the old houses.

“There they go!” piped up a shrill voice of the small-boy brigade.
“Right through Mis' Davisses hen coops!—you ought to see them
hens FLY!” The triumphant glee is beyond the reach of words.
Simultaneous squawking verified the remark, as well as a feminine
voice, urging a violent protest, cut short by a scream of terror, and
the slam of a door. The inhabitants of “Mis' Davisses” house instantly
appeared through the front door, seeking the street.

To show the erraticalness of fate, no sooner had they reached the
road, than Red's mount cleared the parapet of the bridge in a single
leap—a beautiful leap—and came down upon them in the road.

All got out of the way but a three-year-old, forgotten in the
excitement. Upon this small lad, fallen flat in the road, bore the
powerful man and horse. Then there were frantic cries of warning. Fifty
feet between the youngster and those mangling hoofs—twenty—five! the
crowd gasped—they were blotted together! Not so. A mighty hand had
snatched the boy away in that instant of time. He was safe and very
indignant in a howling, huddled heap in the ditch by the roadside, but
alas, for horse and rider! The buckskin was not used to such feats, and
when Red's weight was thrown to the side for the reach he missed his
stride, struck his feet together, and down they went, while the
foot-deep dust sprang into the air like an explosion.

Miss Mattie rushed to the scene of the accident, followed by
everybody. Young Lettis, equally frightened, was close beside her.

“Oh, Will! Are you killed?” she cried.

And then a voice devoid of any signs of weakness, but loaded to the
breaking point with wrath, told in such language as had never been
heard in Fairfield that the owner was still much alive.

The dust settled enough so that the anxious villagers could see
horse and man; the former resting easily, as if he had had enough
athletics for one day, and the latter sitting in the road. Neither
showed any intention of rising.

“What's the matter, Mr. Saunders, are you hurt?” inquired the fussy
post-mistress.

“Please go 'way, ma'am,” said Red, waving his arm.

“I'm sure you're hurt—I'm perfectly sure you're hurt,” she
persisted, holding her ground. “Now, do tell us what can possibly be
the matter with you?”

“Very well,” returned the exasperated cow-puncher, “I will. My
pants, ma'am, have suffered in this turn-up, and they're now in a
condition to make my appearance in polite society difficult, if not
impossible; now please go 'way and somebody fetch me a horse blanket.”

It is regrettable that the discomfiture of the post-mistress was
received with undisguised hilarity. The blanket was produced, and Red
stalked off in Indian dignity, marred by a limp in his left leg, for he
had come upon Mother Earth with a force which made itself felt through
all that foot of soft dust.

“Bring that durn-fool horse along,” he called over his shoulder.
Buckskin rose and followed his owner. There was no light in his eye
now; he looked thoughtful. He, too, limped, and there was a trickle of
blood down his nose. Verily it had been a hard fought field.

* * * * *

As both men were anxious to see the lay of the land as soon as
possible. Red took his place in the waggon that day, after the damages
were repaired, content to wait until his leg was less sore for
horseback riding.

There followed a busy two weeks for them. Mr. Demilt had some money
he wished to put into the enterprise, but his most valuable assistance
was, of course, his thorough knowledge of the resources of the country.

They found an admirable site for the mill, in an old stone barn,
which had stood the ravages of desolation almost unimpaired. Red's
mining experience told him that the creek could easily be flumed to the
barn, and as that was the only objection of the others to this
location, they wrote the owner of the property for a price. They were
astonished when they received the figures. It had come by inheritance
to a man to whom it was a white elephant of the most exasperating sort,
and he was glad to get rid of it for almost a song. They were a
jubilant three at the news. It saved the cost of building a mill, and
including that, the price was as low per acre as any land they could
have obtained. Red closed the bargain instantly.

Lettis' part of the business was chiefly to arrange for the disposal
of their product, and when he explained to his partners what he could
reasonably hope to do in that line, the affair lost its last tint of
unreality, and became a good proposition, for Lettis had an excellent
business acquaintance, who would be glad to deal with the
straightforward young fellow.

The night after the signing of the deeds, Red said to Miss Mattie,
“We ought to have a stockholders' dinner to-morrow night, Mattie. If
you could hire that scow-built girl, who wears her hair scrambled, to
come in and give you a lift, would you feel equal to it?”

“You always put it that I'm doing you a great favour in such things,
Will, but you know perfectly well there's nothing I'd rather do,”
replied Miss Mattie, with a dimpling smile. “However, it adds to the
pleasure of it to have it put in that way, so I won't complain. I'll
just have my supper first, and then you men can talk over your business
undisturbed.”

“You will not—you'll eat with the rest of us.”

“Yes, but you stockholders—” The word had an import to Miss Mattie;
a something, if not regal, at least a kinship to the king. Under her
democracy lay a respect for the founded institution; impersonal; an
integral part of the law of the State; in fact, a minor sovereignty
within an empire.

“Stockholder yourself!” retorted Red. “Don't you call me names.”

“What do you mean, Will?” asked Miss Mattie, with wide-opened eyes.

“I mean you're a stockholder as good as anybody—you've got half my
stack. Now, hold on! Just listen! This is a queer run, Mattie, from the
regulation point of view, this company of ours; I know enough about
fillin' and backin' to know that—you ought to have seen the pryin',
and pokin', and nosin' around them Boston men did before they took holt
of the Chantay Seeche and made it a stock company! One feller was the
ablest durn fool I ever come acrosst. I used to let on I didn't savvey
anything about it. 'Now, explain to me,' says I to him. 'You say you
have so many shares of them stock,' waving my hand to a bunch of
critters in the distance. 'What part do you take? I mean, what's your
share of each animal, and does the last man get the hoofs and the
tail?' 'Oh! you don't understand,' says he. 'I'll explain it to you.'
So he starts in to tell me that 'stock didn't necessarily mean beef
critters,' and a lot more things, whilst old man Ferguson, who was
putting the deal through, stood listening and chewing his teeth,
thinking I was going to give our friend the frolicsome hee-hee at the
wind-up. But I stood solemn, and never even drew a smile, for fear of
queering Ferguson. Well. That's the proper way to start a company; make
it as dreary and long-winded as possible. We ain't done that, and
perhaps we'll go broke for breaking the rules, and then your stock
won't be worth a cuss; so don't you get excited about it. I wanted the
Saunders family to be represented. Pretty soon the old lad with the
nose will be around, and you'll have a chance to read about the
'parties of the first part,' and 'second parts of the party' and
'aforesaids' and 'behindsaids' and the rest of the yappi them lawyers
swing so that honest men won't know what the devil they're up to.”

“Oh, Will! How can I ever thank you!” cried Miss Mattie, her eyes
filling. It seemed a great and responsible position to the gentle lady
to be a stockholder in the corporation. It wasn't the monetary value of
the thing; it was the pride of place.

“If you don't know how, don't try,” returned Red. “You give the
other three stockholders a good feed to-morrow and the thanks will be
up to you. Hello! There's the old lad now!” as a trumpet blast rang out
from the front porch. “It must take some practise to blow your nose
like that. I've heard Jackasses that could not bray in the same class
with that little old gent—come in. Come in! You needn't sound the
rally again.”

Thus adjured the lawyer made his entrance, and Miss Mattie became in
due and involved course of law a stockholder in the Fairfield
Strawboard Mfg. Co.

Fairfield rose to activity like a very small giant refreshed. Teams
and their heavy loads kept the respectable dust in constant commotion.
A grist mill was added to the intended plant, thus offering an
inducement to the farmer to raise grain, and incidentally straw, “So we
can ketch 'em on both ends, too,” as Red put it.

The time seemed like enchantment to Miss Mattie. As a bringer of the
tidings, and a stockholder in the company, she had risen to be a person
of importance, with the result that she was even more modestly shy than
before, although in her heart she liked it; but more delightful yet was
the spirit of holiday activity which inspired and pervaded the place.

Red had insisted on operating on the lines that are laid down with
railroad spikes in the Western communities; to patronise home
industries as much as possible. Therefore the machinery orders went
through Mr. Farrel, the blacksmith, initiating that worthy man into the
mysteries of making money without doing anything for it, which seemed
little less than a miracle to him. Everything that could be bought
through local people was obtained in that way. It cost a trifle more,
but it brought more money into the place, and enabled the villagers to
partake of the enlivenment, without the feeling that it was a Barmecide
feast. The post-mistress furnished the paint, and it is painful to add
that she tried to furnish a number three paint for a number one price,
arguing that she was a poor, lone woman, struggling through an
uncharitable world and that the increased profit would do her
considerable good—a view which Red did not share. He would willingly
have made her a present of the difference, but he did not in the least
intend to be choused out of it by man nor woman. They had a very funny
debate in private, wherein the feminine tried to dominate the masculine
principle by sheer volubility and found to its disgust that the method
didn't work. Red listened most respectfully and always replied, “Yes
ma'am, but we don't want that paint. Get us some good paint—bully old
paint with stick'um in it—this stuff is like whitewash, only feebler.
We're going to put on a swell front up at the mill, and we've got to
have the right thing.” And at last the post-mistress said that she
would, her respect for the ex-cowpuncher having risen noticeably in the
meantime.

The work on the mill was pushed, and in spite of the usual amount of
unforeseen delays, it was ready for work by the latter part of
September. The official opening was set for the twenty-seventh—Miss
Mattie's birthday—and the village of Fairfield was invited to a picnic
to be held at the mill in honor of the occasion. It is needless to say
that the Fairfield Strawboard Mfg. Co. did the thing up in shape.
Waggons loaded with straw, and drawn by four-horse teams, went the
rounds of the village, collecting the guests. It is doubtful if
Fairfield was ever more surprised than at the realisation of how much
there was of her—using the pronoun out of respect to the
majority—“when she was bunched,” as Red said. You would not have
believed that straggling, lonesome-looking place held so many people.
As Red could discover no means in the town's resources to provide a
meal for three hundred people it was necessarily a basket party, which
struck Mr. Saunders as being grievously like a Swede treat. He made up
for it in a measure by having barrels of lemonade and cider on tap at
the grounds—stronger beverages being barred—and by hiring a quartette
of strings “clear from town.”

At half-past two on a resplendent but hot September afternoon the
caravan started for the mill grounds, the women dressed in the most
un-picnicky costumes imaginable, and the men ostentatiously at ease in
their store clothes. Everyone was in the best of spirits, keen for the
excitement and pleasure that was sure to mark the occasion.

Red rode old Buckskin, who had succumbed to the inevitable, and only
“jumped around a little,” as Red put it, on being mounted. It was
pretty lively “jumping around,” but perhaps Mr. Saunders found some
satisfaction in sitting perfectly at his ease, smoking his cigarette,
while Buck jumped and Fairfield admired. And, at any rate, Buck had
legs of iron, and the wind of a locomotive, carrying Red all day, and
willing to kick at anything which bothered him when night came. He was
a splendid beast through and through, from forelock to tail-tip, but he
had learned who was his master and obeyed him accordingly.

It was a five mile ride, mostly under the shade of fine old trees.
The road wound around the hills; here and there a break in the arboreal
border showed views of rolling country, well-shaped and pleasing,
winding up grassy slopes in groves of verdure. Of course most of the
freshness of leaf was past, yet the modest gray-green gave a silvery
sheen to the landscape that brought it into unity.

One member of the party felt that his heart was very full as he
looked at it. That was Lettis. “Blast the old office!” he kept saying
to himself. “Blast its six dingy windows, and the clock at the end!
Doesn't this look good, and doesn't it smell good, dust and all?” and
then he'd howl at the horses in sheer exuberance of good feeling,
making the mild old brutes put a better foot of it to the front.

Red cantered up beside his waggon. “Well, Lettis,” he said, “here we
go for the opening overture, with the full strength of the
company—we're great people this day, ain't we?” And the big man smiled
like a pleased big boy.

“Oh, what a bully old fellow you are!” thought Lettis as he looked
at him. Lettis was thinking of other qualities than flesh, but the
physical Red Saunders on horseback was deserving of a glance from
anybody; the massive figure so well poised; the clear cut, proud
profile; the shapely head with its crown of red-gold hair; the easy
grace of him by virtue of his strength—it would be a remarkable crowd
in which Chanta Seechee Red couldn't pass for a man. He was every inch
of that from the ground up.

Lettis had come to bow down to him in adoration, with all an
affectionate boy's worship. To those eyes Red was just right, in every
particular. Likewise to Miss Mattie, who even now was filling her eyes
with him, from behind the vantage of a broad-brimmed straw hat.

At last the whole party disembarked at the flat before the mill, and
made ready for the official starting of the machinery. The big doors
were thrown open, so that the company could see within while resting
outside in the shade, and under the cooling influence of what breeze
there was. The mill was officially started. Red climbed the bank to the
flume, and raised the gate. The crowd cheered as the imprisoned waters
leapt to freedom with a hollow roar, raising in pitch as the penstock
filled and the wheels began to go round. Speech was called for, and the
vigorously protesting Red forced to the front by his former friends,
Demilt and Lettis. Thus betrayed by those he trusted, Red made the best
of it.

“Ladies and gentlemen, fellow citizens!” said he. “The mill is now
open to all comers. We hope to make this thing a success; we hope to
see every horny-handed, hump-backed farmer in the country rosin the
soles of his moccasins, and shove his plough through twice as much
ground as he ever did before, and if he comes here with his plunder,
we'll give him a square shake. We'll pay him as much as we dast, and
not let him in on the ground floor, so he can crawl out through the
coal-hole, as is sometimes done. Now, everybody run away and have a
good time, for I don't like to talk this yappi any more than you like
to hear it. Kola geus! By-bye!”

It was a very successful picnic. They spent the afternoon in
wandering around in the usual picnic fashion, developing appetites,
until it occurred to Red to liven the performance by showing them the
art of roping, as practiced upon an old cow found in the woods. As a
spectacle it was a failure. The combined efforts of all the hooting
small boys could not make that cow run; she even stretched her neck
toward Red, as though saying, “Hurry up with your foolishness. I have a
cud to chew and can't stand here idle all day.” So Red galloped by and
threw the noose over her head as an exhibition of how the thing was
done, rather than how it ought to be done. Nevertheless, picnic parties
are not hypercritical in the matter of amusement, and the feat received
three encores. The last time he missed his cast through overconfidence.
Whereat the old cow tossed her head and tail in the air, and tore off
at an elephantine gallop, with a bawl that sounded to Red mightily like
derision.

“Durned if she ain't laughing at me!” he cried. But as a matter of
fact, it was a hornet and its unmistakable sting that injected this
activity into her system.

It was all very pleasant to Miss Mattie, as one's first picnic in
many years should be. She enjoyed the crisp green sod, the great trees
standing around, park-like, with the sunlight falling between their
shade like brilliant tatters of cloth-of-gold; while from the near
distance came the tiny shouting of cool waters. They had a camp-fire at
night, making the moonlight still more mysterious and remote by
contrast. The quartette of strings played for the ears of those who
cared to listen and for the legs of those who chose to take chances on
tripping their light fantastic toes over tree roots in the grass.

Red loved music, and he loved the night. The poetic side of his
memories of watching the Dipper swing around Polaris, while he sung the
cows to sleep, came back to him. In his mind he saw the vast prairie
roll on to infinity; saw the mountains stand out, a world of white
peaks, rising from a sea of darkness. Again he heard the plaintive
shrilling of an Indian whistle, or the song of the lad down creek made
tuneful and airy by the charm of distance.

“Having a good time, Mattie?” he asked, with a smile.

“The best I ever had, Will,” she answered, smiling back unsteadily.
Poor lady! The size of an occasion is so many standards, whether the
standard be inches or feet, or miles. Miss Mattie's events had been
measured in hundredths of an inch, and it took a good many of them to
cover so small an action as a successful picnic on a beautiful night.
Her eyes were humid; her mouth smiled and drooped at the corners
alternately. Red felt her happiness with a keen sympathy, and as he
looked at her, suddenly she changed in his eyes. Just what the
difference was he could not have told; nor whether it was in her or in
him. A sudden access of feeling, undefinable, unplaceable, but strong,
possessed him. There is a critical temperature in the life of a man,
when no amount of pressure can ever make the more expansive emotions
assume the calmer form of friendship. There was something in Miss
Mattie's eye which had warmed Red to that degree, but he didn't know
it. He only knew that he wanted to sit rather unnecessarily close
beside her, and that he would be sorry when it came time to go home.
And he was very silent.

During the drive back to the house he spoke in monosyllables; he
went straight to the barn with Lettis afterward, and made no attempt to
take the usual frank and hearty good-night kiss.

“You're as glum as an oyster!” said Lettis, when they reached their
quarters. “What's the matter, old man?”

“I don't know, Let; I feel kind of quiet, somehow.”

“Sick? Or something go wrong?”

“No; nothing of the kind; it's just sort of an attack of stillness,
but I feel durn good.”

Lettis laughed. “If it wasn't you, Red, I'd say you were in love,”
he said.

It was well the barn was dark; or he would have seen a change
wonderful to behold come over the ex-puncher's face. “The lad has hit
it,” he said to himself in astonishment; aloud he grunted “hunh"
scornfully, and aroused himself for an unnecessary joke or two.

Miss Mattie had noticed the “attack of stillness” and immediately
tried to fasten the blame upon herself. What had she done? She couldn't
recall anything. She remembered she had said something about the way
his hair looked with the moon shining on it; perhaps he had taken
offence at that; the remark was entirely complimentary, but sometimes
people are touchy about such things; still that was not the least like
Cousin Will. She must have said or done something though—what could it
be? Oh what a pitiful memory that could not recollect an injury done to
one's best friend! She tossed and wondered over it for a long time
before at length she tell asleep.

Red also looked up at the roof, and took account of stock. His face
was radiant in the dark. “If I could only pull that off!” he thought.
“I must seem an awful rough cuss to her, though; all right for a
cousin, but it's different when you come to the other proposition. My
Jiminy! I'll take a chance in the morning and find out anyhow!” said
he, and, eased in mind by the decision of action, he too shook hands
with Morpheus and was presently dreaming.

It had never occurred to Red Saunders that he was afraid of anybody.
He even chuckled, when he got Lettis out of the way with a plausible
excuse the next morning. Then he strode briskly into the house, his
question on his lips in a plump out-and-out form.

Miss Mattie looked at him with her slow smile. “What is it?” she
asked.

Red swallowed his question whole. “I—I wanted a little hot water to
shave with,” said he. Then a fury took hold of him. “What the devil am
I lying like this for?” he thought. He exhorted himself to go on and
say what he had to say like a man; but the other Red Saunders refused
to do anything of the sort. He took the cup of hot water most abjectly
and fled from the house. He had to shave then, and in his hurry and
indignation he turned the operation into a clinic. “Oh Jiminy! Look at
that!” he cried, as the razor opened up another part of the subject.
“There's a slit an inch long! If I keep on at this gait, I won't have
face enough to say good morning, let alone what I want to do. What ails
me? What ails me? Why should I be scart of the nicest woman God ever
built? Now by all the Mormon Gods! I'll post right into the house and
say my little say as soon as these cuts stop bleeding!”

Cob-webs stopped the cuts, and other cob-webs stopped Red Saunders,
late of the Chanta Seechee ranch; two hundred and fifty pounds of the
very finest bone and muscle. And the cob-webs held him, foaming and
boiling with rage and disgust, calling himself all the yaller pups he
could think of, but staying strictly within the safe limits of the
barn. It was a revelation to the big man, and not a pleasant one. How
was he to know that the most salient point of his apparent cowardice
was nothing less worthy than respect for the woman's purity? That if he
would stop swearing long enough to get at the springs of his action, he
would find that he hesitated because the new light on the matter made
huge shadows of the slips in the career of a strong, lawless, untrained
but sorely tempted man? He knew nothing of the sort, and the funniest
of comedies took place in the barn. He would reach the sensible stage.
“Pah! All foolishness. Go? Of course he'd go, and this very minute, and
have the thing done with, good or bad”; he was quite amused at his
former conduct—until he reached the door. Then he'd skip nimbly back
again, with a hot feeling that somebody was watching him, although a
careful inspection through the crack of the door revealed no one.

Red discovered another thing that afternoon, which was that the more
nervous you are the more nervous you get. He groaned in perfect misery:
“Ohoho! That I should have seen the day when I was afraid to ask
anybody anything. What's come over me anyhow? It's this darn country, I
believe—'tain't me,” then he stopped short. “What you saying, Red?” he
queried. “Why don't you own up like a man!” The fact that it had a
funny side struck him, and he laughed, half forlornly, and half in
thorough enjoyment. He suddenly sobered down. “She's worth it, anyway,”
said he. “She's the best there is, and I ought to feel kind of leery of
the outcome—Well—Now, I guess I won't say anything till there's a
downright good chance. I see I didn't savvy this kind of business like
I thought I did. 'Twouldn't be no kind of manners to step up to a lady
and shout, 'I'd like to have you marry me, if you feel you've got the
time!' That don't go no more than a Chinaman on roller-skates. Your
work is good, Red, but it's a little lumpy in spots; them two left feet
bother you; you're good in your place, but you'd better build a fence
around the place—damn the luck! Smotheration! I think she likes me,
all right, but when it comes to more'n that—oh, blast it, I'll just
have to wait for a real good chance; now come, old man, get four feet
on the ground and don't roll your eyes, take it easy till the chance
comes.”

Little he knew the chance was coming up the street at that moment.
He only saw Miss Mattie step out into the bed of flowers, her face
looking unusually pretty and youthful under the big straw hat, and
start to reduce the weeds to order. She glanced around as though in
search of some one, and Red felt intuitively that the one was himself.

“Here's where I ought to act as if I wore long pants,” said he;
“now, what's to hinder me from going out there and get a-talking?” And
then he sat down hastily, more disgusted than ever, and smote the air
with his fist. “You'd think the nicest, quietest woman that ever lived
was a wild beast, the way I act; yes sir, you would!”

Meantime the chance drew nearer. It was not a pleasant looking
opportunity. Its eyes, full of dread and dreadful, peeped out from
beneath a brush of matted hair; a tough, ropy foam hung from its mouth.
If you put as much of that foam as would go on the point of a pin in an
open cut, you would have an end that your worst enemy would shudder at.
For this was the most horrifying of dangerous animals—a mad dog. Poor
brute! As he came shambling down the road, he was the grisly mask of
tragedy.

It was near noon, intensely hot, and the street of Fairfield was
deserted. No one saw the dog, and if his occasional rattling,
strangling howl reached any ears, they were dead to its meaning. He was
unheeded until he lurched through the gate which Lettis had left open,
as usual, and spinning around in a circle gave voice to his cry.

It brought Miss Mattie to her feet in an unknown terror; it brought
Red from the barn in a full cognizance—he had heard that sound before,
when a mad coyote landed in a cabin-full of fairly strong nerved
cowmen, and set them screeching like hysterical women before a chance
shot ended him.

Red saw the brute jump toward Miss Mattie. Instantly his hand flew
to his hip, and as instantly he remembered there was nothing there.
Then with great, uneven leaps he sprang forward. “Keep your hands up,
Mattie, and don't move!” he screamed. “Let him chew the dress! For
God's sake, don't move!”

She turned her white face toward his, and through the dimness of
sight from his straining efforts, he saw her try to smile, as she
obeyed him to the letter, and without a sound. “O, brave girl!” he
thought, and threw the ground behind him desperately.

At twenty feet distance he dove like a base-runner, and his hands
closed around the dog's neck. Over they went with the shock of the
onset, and before they were still, the hands had finished their work. A
clutch, and a snap, and it was done.

The dog lay quivering. Red rose to his knees wondering at the
humming in his head. His wits came back to him sharply.

“Did he bite you, Mattie?” he cried. But she had already caught his
hands and was looking at them, with a savage eagerness one would not
have believed to be in her.

She answered him with a sob “No.” And then his question asked
itself, and answered itself, although, again, he did not know it. He
gathered her up in his arms, kissed her like one raised from the dead,
and swore and prayed and thanked God all in the same breath.

His old imperious nature came back with the relief. “Here!” said he,
putting her away for a moment. “Take off that dress—that slime on
there's enough to kill a hundred men—take it right off.”

Miss Mattie started blindly to obey, then stopped. “Not here,
Will—I'll go in the house,” she said.

“You'll take it off right here and now,” said Red, “and I'll burn it
up on the spot. I'd ruther have forty rattlesnakes around than that
stuff—off with it. This is no child's play, and I don't care a damn
what the old lady next door thinks.”

Miss Mattie slipped off her outer skirt, and stood a second,
confused and dainty. She took flight to the house, running as lithely
as a greyhound.

“By Jingo!” said Red in admiration.

“Let's see you bring another woman that can run like that!”

He gathered some hay and piled it on the dress, firing the heap.

Then he turned to his antagonist. “Poor old boy! Hard luck, eh? But
I had to do it,” he said, and gave him decent interment at the end of
the garden; washed his hands carefully and went into the house on
pleasanter duties.

“I'll ask her now, by the great horn spoon!” said he, valiantly.

Miss Mattie was in a curious state of mind. There was an after
effect from the fright, which made her tremble, and a remembrance of
Cousin Will's actions which made her tremble more yet. When she heard
him coming she started to fly, although now clothed beyond reproach,
but her knees deserted her, and she was forced to sink back in her
chair. Red came in whistling blithely—vainglorious man!

He had his suspicions, generated by the peculiar fervour Miss
Mattie had shown in regard to his hands.

“Mattie,” quoth he, “I'm tired of living out there in the barn—I
want a respectable house of my own.”

“Yes, Will,” replied Miss Mattie, astonished that he should choose
such a subject at such a time.

“Yes,” he continued, “and I want a wife, too. You often said you'd
like to do something for me, Mattie; suppose you take the job?”

How much of glancing at a thing in one's mind as a beautiful
improbability will ever make such a cold fact less astonishing? Miss
Mattie eyed him with eyes that saw not; speech was stricken from her.

Red caught fright. He sprang forward and took her hand. “Couldn't
you do it, Mattie?” said he. There was a world of pleading in the tone.
Miss Mattie looked up, her own honest self; all the little feminine
shrinkings left her immediately.

“Ah, but I could, Will!” she said. Lettis came up on the
stoop unheard. He stopped, then gingerly turned and made his way back
on tip-toe, holding his arms like wings.

“Well, by George!” he murmured, “I'll come back in a little while,
when I'll be more welcome.”

He spoke to Red in strong reproach that night, in the barn. “You
never told me a word, you old sinner!” said he.

“Tell you the honest truth, Let,” replied Red earnestly, looking up
from drawing off a boot, “I didn't know it myself till you told me
about it.”

They talked it all over a long time before blowing out the light,
but then the little window shut its bright eye, and the only life the
mid-night stars saw in Fairfield was Miss Mattie, her elbow on the
casement, looking far, far out into the tranquil night, and thinking
mistily.